New NWA grant strengthens PThU research on church and slavery
With a €150,000 grant from the Dutch National Science Agenda (NWA), PThU’s research project Church and Slavery will gain a strong follow-up on Curaçao. The new project Dialogue on Faith Communities, Slavery, and Colonialism: Stories of Past, Present, and Future opens the door to a broad conversation about faith, history, and healing. Whereas Church and Slavery has primarily focused on historical and theological research, this new trajectory aims to share and deepen the knowledge gained through encounters and exchanges with local communities. In this way, academic insights and personal stories come together directly.
Broad collaboration across borders
The new project is led by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Echteld (University of Curaçao) and carried out in collaboration with the Protestant Theological University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Museum Catharijneconvent. Other partners include the Dutch Foundation for the Healing Process of Slavery’s Past, NAAM (National Archaeological and Anthropological Memory Management), and Unidat di Bario Kòrsou. For PThU researcher Prof. Dr. Annette Merz, the connection between the dialogue project and Church and Slavery is self-evident: “The NWA call for science communication offered us the opportunity to take the earlier collaboration within the 2024 exhibition Christianity and Slavery a step further. The cross-pollination between research, museum work, and community dialogue makes this project especially valuable.” The connecting link between both projects is Prof. Dr. Rose Mary Allen, anthropologist at the University of Curaçao, who plays an important role in each.
Dialogue as a path to insight and restoration
The new project invites young adults and adults on Curaçao to engage in conversation about the role of faith communities in the history of slavery — and how that legacy continues to shape the present. Using theatre techniques and storytelling, both personal and collective stories will be brought to life. These conversations often touch on painful family histories, in which ancestors may have been both enslaved and enslavers. Religion played a double role here: as a source of wounding and as a source of healing. The project seeks not only to make scholarly insights accessible but above all to place the voices and stories of local communities at the centre.
Highlight: presentation in Curaçao in 2025
During the conference Christianity and Slavery in the Dutch Caribbean Islands, Surinam, and the Netherlands (10–14 November 2025, Curaçao), the project will be broadly presented. This session within the conference will provide space for deepening, dialogue, and reflection together with faith and church communities from across the Kingdom of the Netherlands and beyond. For this conference, PThU researcher Martijn Stoutjesdijk had already received a KNAW Early Career Partnership grant earlier this year, amounting to €10,000.
