Dr. Klaas Stutje
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Biography
Klaas Stutje is senior researcher in the Expert Centre Restitution. He conducts research into the loss of cultural goods under the Nazi regime and the colonial period, and into the role of provenance research in restitution requests and policy. Until March 2022 he was involved in PPROCE project: Pilot Project Provenance Research on Objects of the Colonial Era. In this project, which was a collaboration between NIOD, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the National Museum of World Cultures, Stutje conducted provenance research on a large selection of museum objects from colonial Indonesia. Ultimately, the project led to the publication of methodological recommendations for such research, see here. Stutje had also delved into the history of Dutch imperialism and colonial Indonesia in earlier research projects. This led to the publication of a book in 2019.
The book Campaigning in Europe for a Free Indonesia, published by NIAS Press in 2019, grew out of PhD research at the University of Amsterdam. In this research, Stutje studied the history of Indonesian nationalism and anti-colonialism, with a special emphasis on the international network of young Indonesian activists in Europe. It led to several publications, including the most recent article ’Herald of a Failed Revolt: Mohammad Hatta in Brussels, 1927’ in The League Against Imperialism, Lives and Afterlives (LUP 2020).
From 2016 to 2019, Stutje was a postdoctoral researcher at the IISH on a project about labour camps and penal labour in colonial Indonesia. This resulted in an article on the Nusakambangan prison island in the International Review of Social History (Vol. 64, 2019).
Other research areas are the history of Indonesian communism and Dutch migration history.