Hanneke Verbeek
Hanneke Verbeek (b. 1984) is a migration historian with a specialisation in Oral History. After completing her Bachelor’s degree in European Studies (specialisation migration and asylum policy of the European Union) at Maastricht University, she completed the Master’s degree in Migration History at Leiden University with a research on territorial stigmatisation of residents with a migration background in a Rotterdam deprived neighbourhood labelled by the (local) government. She then worked as a project officer at Leiden University (Campus The Hague), where, together with Prof Wim Willems, she wrote a book on one hundred years of Polish migration to the Netherlands (titled Honderd jaar heimwee) and collaborated on the publication Mi casa su casa by writer Steven Adolf and the travelling exhibition of the same name on 50 years of Spanish migration to the Netherlands. For her second book together with Wim Willems, she researched Scheveningen’s Jewish past. This resulted in the publication Hier woonden wij.
In 2016, she founded (as artistic director) together with Inge Brouwer (as business director) Stichting De Muren hebben Oren, which offered and provides an educational project at primary schools in Randstad area. It is a six-week project focusing on (migration) history from 1940 to the present day, with two classes from the same city but with socio-economically and socio-culturally different profiles working together. The project takes an inclusive approach in which the diversity in the city, which is also reflected in the classes, is the common thread. In doing so, the project, which is also continuing in several cities this school year, gives grade 7 and 8 pupils the opportunity to discover their own and others’ family histories. The sense of belonging starts with the awareness of a shared history. Those stories connect the very diverse residents to each other and to the city.
In 2019, Hanneke wrote a book on 50 years of Moroccan labour migration to Rotterdam called Marokkanen in de Maasstad with portraits of Rotterdam Moroccans. She then became project leader of the redesign of the website Vijfeeuwenmigratie, a collaboration between het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis and het Centrum voor de Geschiedenis van Migranten (CGM) in which she had been involved as a consultant for some time.
In 2021, she and Milena Mulders set up the project Tussenlanding – een tastbare herinnering aan tijdelijkheid, in which the maquette of AZC Markelo plays the main role. The maquette is part of the exhibition While Waiting for an Unknown Future and can be visited from 3 November to 22 January 2023 at Framer Framed.
In February 2022, she also started as Team Leader at VluchtelingenWerk Nederland, where she already worked as a volunteer social worker from 2010-2013 and from 2015-2016. In all her professional activities, connection is central. Connecting with those whom the project is about, connecting lost voices from the past to the present or, on the contrary, bringing to the fore those voices from the now that are not heard or do not enjoy proper representation. In doing so, she never loses sight of how this can be fed back into the policy development and formation of various (social) institutions such as museums, archives but also funds.
- Tussenlanding - een tastbare herinnering aan tijdelijkheid
- PODCAST: DOCS - Model without residence permit (NL)
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Exhibitions
