Research Highlights 2014
I. AMC researchers together with the Faculty of Law, Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg were granted an internal competitive fund for their project ‘the Maastricht Centre for Arts, Culture, Conservation and Heritage’.
This year marks the formation of a new interdisciplinary research centre at FASoS: the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage (MACCH). MACCH is an initiative of FASoS in collaboration with the UM Faculty of Law (FL), the School of Business and Economics (SBE), the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences and the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (SRAL). With its unique combination of legal, historical, philosophical, economic and practical expertise, MACCH aims to meet the demands of the increasingly multi-layered and complex challenges facing the fields of arts and heritage today. Focus areas of research and teaching activities are: the changing role of experts and expert knowledge, public participation, and technological mediation. By working across the traditional boundaries that separate academic and professional disciplines and institutions, the centre will be instrumental in building capacity to strengthen existing collaborations and open up new ventures for research.
The Centre was launched during the international conference 'Assembling Value: The Changing Roles of Experts and Expertise in Art and Heritage Worlds' on 22-23 March 2015 in Maastricht.
Visit the MACCH website for more information.
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II. Karin Wenz and Annika Richterich have been granted funding from the NWO programme ‘Creative industry – Knowledge Innovation Mapping’ (KIEM) for their project ‘Hacking Heritage – Exploring and enhancing user practices of mining heritage’.
FASoS researchers Dr Karin Wenz and Dr Annika Richterich have been granted funding from the NWO programme ‘Creative industry – Knowledge Innovation Mapping’ (KIEM) for their project ‘Hacking Heritage – Exploring and enhancing user practices of mining heritage’. For this project FASoS will team up with the Discovery Center Continium in Kerkrade, and the Heerlen-based Social Beta Foundation and the Betawerk ICT company.
As part of their research, Wenz and Richterich will organize hackathons: during these ‘hacking-marathons’, participants will create digital projects such as apps or augmented reality games. The events will serve as fields for ethnographic research. Wenz and Richterich will investigate how innovative practices and digital technologies can facilitate making the mining heritage in South Limburg accessible to younger audiences. They will likewise address how those innovative practices can shape contemporary local culture. Digital culture and media practices offer tools to re-appropriate heritage through visualization strategies, the use of apps and the development of smart technologies. Looking at the socio-economic transition of South Limburg from a mining area to a region focusing on creative industries, the project aims to use digital technologies to (re-)connect diverse age groups to the region’s heritage and to achieve culturally inclusive practices.
The Creative industry – KIEM programme aims to encourage and facilitate public-private partnerships in the field of creative industries. Hacking Heritage is a flagship project of the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage (MACCH), an interdisciplinary research centre of Maastricht University that brings together researchers from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Law (FL), the School of Business and Economics (SBE), the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, and the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (SRAL) and has the support of MACCH coordinator Dr Vivian van Saaze. 
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III. Agnes Andeweg has been granted funding from the NWO programme ‘Alfa Meerwaarde’ for her research project ‘De Vliegende Hollander: van (inter)nationaal symbool tot lokale held’.
NWO has awarded Agnes Andeweg’s Alfa Meerwaarde project ‘De Vliegende Hollander: van (inter)nationaal symbool tot lokale held’ (The Flying Dutchman: from (inter)national symbol to local hero’). In cooperation with the city of Terneuzen (which profiles itself as ‘city of the Flying Dutchman’), and Manuel Stoffers (History), Andeweg will write a publication, supported by a webpage, about the cultural-historical dimensions of the Flying Dutchman.
The publication analyzes the international dissemination of the Flying Dutchman legend, how it takes on different meanings in new contexts and periods, what the Flying Dutchman can tell us about images and stereotypes of Dutchness, and how the legend has shaped, and still shapes local identities in Terneuzen.
