ASPECT doctoral student Rob Flahive was awarded one of four 2020 Junior Fellowships from the Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC) in the Netherlands.

The RCMC is a research institute within four museums – Tropenmuseum, Museum Volkenkunde, the Afrika Museum, and the Wereldmuseum – that serves as a focal point for research on ethnographic collections throughout the country.

Flahive’s project reframes the history of the Van Nelle Factory, a UNESCO World Heritage List site in Rotterdam designed to improve labor conditions for processing tea, coffee, and tobacco from the Dutch colonies in 1929. His project culminates in a workshop discussing the relationship of Dutch colonialism, modernist architecture, and architectural preservation with preservationists, scholars, and curators.