Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
The NINO Annual Meeting offers an opportunity for advanced students and researchers of the Near East (ancient to the early modern) in the Netherlands to meet and exchange ideas about ongoing and envisioned research projects. The event is co-organized by the Netherlands Institute of the Near East (NINO) and an alternating host institution. This year the meeting is hosted by the University of Groningen, on the topic:
The study of the Near East has historically been entangled with politics, from those of early modern states and empires, to those of foreign institutes, universities, and museums. This annual meeting focuses on heritage politics of the Middle East from a historical perspective. How have the studies of historical sources, archaeological remains, and texts from the past, been involved with early modern state formation, (de)colonization, cultural diplomacy, economic policies, memory practices? How was this involvement received by people living in the Middle East, and heritage institutions abroad? And today, how is it represented in the curricula of degrees focusing on the Middle Eastern past? How does it influence fieldwork and archive practices?
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We invite 20 min. papers on studies pertaining to this topic. In addition, we invite 5 min. research introductions on any ongoing and envisioned research on the Near East. Junior scholars (MA, PhD) are particularly welcome to apply. |
Download the Call for Papers as a pdf file
The NINO Annual Meeting will feature keynote lectures by Naseem Raad (American University of Beirut) and Daniel Soliman (National Museum of Antiquities) and will be accompanied by the photo exhibit A New industry in an Ancient Land: Archeology, tourism and cultural diplomacy in the Holy Lands – from the historical Frank Scholten photographic collection.
Morning session: 4-6 talks on Heritage and Politics + introduction to exhibit
Afternoon session: lightning sessions on new research + NINO Thesis Prizes award ceremony
Please register via email if you wish to attend, present during the lightning session, or present a longer paper on the topic of Heritage and Politics. Please include the following information:
Please register by email to ninoconf25@gmail.com by November 1, 2024.
Canan Çakirlar – Audrey Crabbé – Bill Figueroa – Lidewijde de Jong – Mayada Madbouly – Karène Sanchez-Summerer
A New industry in an Ancient Land considers the vocabularies of tourism to think about the ways in which these ‘Holy Lands’ were both produced and consumed by different actors. Archaeology, archaeologists and photography are central: they informed the tourism industry through the production of travel guides and tour manuals, photo books and postcards, and the framing of holy sites and biblical cartographies.
The exhibition also considers the relationship between tourism and cultural diplomacy, and thus archaeology, which was central to such endeavors given the formation of the joint British, French and American Archaeological Advisory Board and the ways in which such cultural diplomacy shaped the presentation of archaeological materials. The Palestine Archaeological Museum, now the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, stands testament to such processes.
A New industry in an Ancient Land will address how local cultural production may have formed as a response to Western scholarly interests in the region. Archaeology became increasingly entwined with both Western diplomatic aspirations in the Levant, but also part of the circuits of popular tourism. In this respect, the biblical overtones of ‘Holy Land’ tourism is both a product of modernity (especially the technological infrastructures that enabled it), but also a projection into an ancient past that undermines such modernity.
Illustration: Imwas (biblical Emmaus). NINO, F. Scholten, Photographic print