Rob van Ginkel
Rob van Ginkel is a senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam. He graduated in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology at the same university (1988, both cum laude), and also obtained his Ph.D. there (1993, cum laude). His academic interests are in the field of history and anthropology, the history of anthropology, maritime cultures and fishing communities, animal symbolism, European ethnology, national and local culture and identity formation, Suburbia and the ethnography of the Netherlands.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, van Ginkel did fieldwork in several Dutch maritime communities. His dissertation analyzes ecological, economic and socio-cultural change in two fishing villages on the island of Texel. As an Amsterdam School of Social Science Research postdoctoral fellow he conducted research concerning the 20th-century scholarly and popular debate on Dutch culture and identity. Subsequent research led him to suburban Zoetermeer, where he studied (the lack of) social cohesion and feelings of belonging. From August 2005 until September 2006, he conducted follow-up research on Texel. His current research focuses on remembrance and cultures of commemoration.
Van Ginkel authored several books and scores of articles in edited volumes and national and international journals. For his scholarly work he received the Ruigrok Award of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (1994) and the Hoogendijk Award (2000). With Jojada Verrips he founded and editedMaritime (Anthropological) Studies. He has been an editor of several other social science journals, including Etnofoor (which he co-founded), Focaal,Volkskundig Bulletin and Sociologische Gids. He was or still is on the editorial boards of cULTUUR, Sociologie and Etnofoor.
In the summer of 2008, Van Ginkel embarked on a new research project concerning the commemoration of World War II in the Netherlands, focusing particularly on war cemeteries, monuments and rituals and their symbolic and ideological dimensions. A book on this topic (in Dutch, title Rondom de stilte. Herdenkingscultuur in Nederland) appeared in February 2011.
