de Cesari, Chiara

Dr. de Cesari is Associate Professor in European Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Trained in socio-cultural anthropology (Ph.D. Stanford 2009), she is an internationally significant voice in debates over the geopolitical trajectories of contemporary culture. Her wide-ranging research explores how institutional manifestations of memory, heritage, art, and cultural politics are shifting under conditions of contemporary globalization and ongoing transformations of the nation-state. In particular, it concerns the ways in which colonial legacies live on today, especially in museums. Against that backdrop, her work shows how countercultures, arts practices, and decolonial struggles can drive change within public institutions and cultural discourses around heritage and identity more generally.