Samuel vander Straeten (2023)

I am a PhD researcher funded by the Allen, Meek & Read Cambridge International Scholarship (Cambridge Trust). I originally studied history and historical theory at Ghent University, for which I received a BA in 2021 and an MA in 2022. Supported by the Fayat Scholarship from the Flemish Government, I then obtained an MPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2023.

Throughout my studies at Ghent University, I have combined historical and postcolonial theory, memory studies, and anthropological perspectives to study how people engage with and relate to colonial pasts. I analysed ontological and epistemic assumptions among the historiographical school of the Subaltern Studies (2021) and ethnographically mapped strategies/tactics of resistance/refusal among European Black History Month initiatives (2022). Thus, gradually, I have developed a broader ethnographic interest in how people engage and live with “difference” in everyday life in postcolonial contexts. For my MPhil at Cambridge, I therefore conducted fieldwork in the London district of Brixton to explore how local historical consciousnesses and related spatial configurations shape everyday inter-“racial” relations (2023).

This eventually led me to my current PhD project. For this project, I conduct long-term fieldwork in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in the Belgian city of Antwerp (my hometown). I’m interested in how Antwerp denizens from various ethno-racial backgrounds live with each other in their everyday lives. Here, I want to pay explicit attention to how these everyday dynamics are shaped by – and shape – Antwerp’s particular historical, discursive, and spatio-material context.