“How can heritage help people shape and foster new, more equitable futures? Which prevailing historical narratives and memory practices hinder society in addressing critical issues like climate change and decolonization? And how can we overcome these?”
Dr. Gertjan Plets is an associate professor of cultural history and heritage. He studies how various actors- grassroots organisations, corporations, and political factions- mobilise heritage to craft new societies. In his research, he explores both the potential of heritage activism in promoting new societal forms and ideas and how, for instance, corporations and governments use museums to strengthen their position in society. In his teaching and projects, he emphasizes the potential of heritage in climate justice and how history can be exploited to delay climate action simultaneously. His primary field site is Groningen, where he is involved in creating new initiatives for heritage preservation and presentation. His second main line of research examines the potential of colonial academic heritage and restitution in fostering new international collaborations and negotiating more resilient universities.
In addition to these projects, Plets endeavours to establish heritage studies and new museology as a prominent research theme at Utrecht University and in the Low Countries. He firmly believes in the long-term effects of reflexive engagement with the past, recognising heritage and museums' enduring political and cultural implications. New historical narratives and creative interpretations have the potential to foster a more just, resilient, and equitable society. To advance heritage studies at Utrecht, he supervises and promotes a wide range of research initiatives, some of which are tangentially related to his research focus.
Currently, he is the principal investigator or project leader of three large consortium projects in heritage studies: the EU-Horizon project COLUMN (PL), the EU-Horizon project PITCH (PI), and the NWA-ORC project Constructing the Limes (PI). He proudly co-supervises three PhD students, three postdocs, and a project manager. Before these projects, he conducted 11 years of ethnographic research in the Altai Republic (Russian Federation), studying the politics of heritage among non-Russian Indigenous nationalities and minorities.
Cultural heritage of oil and natural gas (Petrocultures in Heritage Horizon Project)
During his postdoc project at Stanford University, he studied how large energy companies mobilize cultural property to strengthen their societal position. In Russia, he analyzed how Gazprom used history and archaeology museums as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy (CSR) to acquire a license to operate from indigenous communities. Since his tenure at Utrecht, he has also studied how oil and gas companies in the Netherlands, Germany and the US fund heritage institutions to promote gas extraction and downplay environmental hazards. He does not only problematise current narrations of oil and those dominant funding practices normalising the oil industry. With inhabitants and grassroots organisations in Groningen, he assists with developing a new museum and heritage sites, triggering reflection about natural gas, earthquakes and climate change.
Decolonization of University and Academic Heritage (Colonial Legacies of Universities Horizon Project)
During his PhD, Gertjan studied how indigenous Siberians struggled against the dominant power structures in the Russian cultural field and how heritage played a key role in subtle forms of activism. During this ethnographic research, he analysed the impact and implications of colonial heritage practices and decolonial counter actions. He traced different repatriation processes and their political implications. Based on this experience with decolonisation and grassroots activism, he became involved in setting up a project exploring how universities can decolonise their heritage and use this process to develop new collaborations across the globe. In this research, he continues his Siberian focus on (physical) anthropology collections.
World Heritage of the Roman Limes (Constructing the Limes Project)
In addition to his heritage research, Plets remains active as an archaeologist. In collaboration with Saskia Stevens and Jaap Verheul, he was awarded a significant consortium grant by the Dutch Science Agenda (NWA-Nationale Wetenschapsagenda) to study the archaeology of the Roman frontier in the Netherlands and trace the reception and heritage discourses around the Limes. This project not only deconstructs heritage discourses but also actively assists the Dutch government and public heritage institutions with developing a sustainable and inclusive curation of this contested past. Together with citizen scientists, the past is studied and dissemination strategies are developed.
Cultural Politics in Siberia
During his PhD at Ghent University (2013), he conducted anthropological research in the Altai Republic (Siberia, Russia) where he studied how the Putin government uses cultural heritage and archaeology as part of its nation-building portfolio. He explored the struggle of indigenous Siberian groups for cultural sovereignty and their interaction with the cultural policies of the Kremlin. As such, he could trace and reconstruct the political entanglements of archaeology and heritage management in the Russian Federation. He has exhaustively published about this research line and a monograph is expected in 2022 published by Routledge.