Project ‘Amsterdam Diaries 2025’
In 2025, Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th anniversary. In light of this upcoming celebration, an interdisciplinary group of scholars1 collects and studies the diaries of ordinary people of diverse social-cultural backgrounds across the centuries. As diaries can offer a unique insight into how people perceive and experience the city in their daily lives, we will investigate how they represent Amsterdam and if and how they express feelings of (non-)belonging. Taking into account cultural differences in forms and practices of self-life writing, we will include other types of egodocuments, such as memoirs, letters written and self-recorded stories on cassette tape.
The project’s central theme is ‘Amsterdam as a multicultural city’ and it is structured along three lines of enquiry:
1). We study diaries and other egodocuments with a thematic focus on (intercultural) spaces, encounters and connections, as well as articulations of (non)belonging, the familiar and the foreign. Our source materials are spread over different archives, as for example: the Nederlands Dagboek Archief; Stadsarchief Amsterdam; ATRIA; NIOD; Joods-Historisch Musem; Nationaal Archief etc.
2). We pay special attention to the diaries and egodocuments of exiles, migrants and refugees who have settled in Amsterdam. Within the framework of the ‘Collecting the City’ project of the Amsterdam Museum, we will organize a donating campaign in 2024 with the purpose of filling the gaps in the archives and helping build a more inclusive and diverse collection of diaries and other egodocuments.
3) We develop digital tools to store and map historical information about diaries and diarists in its spatial and temporal contex. We furthermore explore the means to create a digital resource, in collaboration with the Amsterdam Time Machine, which will enable users to ‘travel back in time and navigate the city on the levels of neighborhoods, streets, houses and rooms’.2 Ideally, this will allow its users to connect stories from multiple perspectives to particular places such as streets, parks, bars, houses and shops.
Project Coordinator: Marleen Rensen https://www.uva.nl/profiel/r/e/m.j.m.rensen/m.j.m.rensen.html?cb
Notes:
- The scholars involved come from history, literary studies and cultural studies and other fields of study. They are related to the expert group ‘Unhinging the National Framework: Platform for the Study of life Writing and Transnationalism’. The group has recently published an edited volume: https://www.sidestone.com/books/unhinging-the-national-framework
- https://www.amsterdamtimemachine.nl/