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Joëlla van Donkersgoed Elected and Ratified as Treasurer of the International Federation for Public History

The International Federation for Public History (IFPH) announces that Joëlla van Donkersgoed is elected and ratified as Treasurer for the 2026–2029 term.

Joëlla van Donkersgoed (she/her) is a first-generation scholar from a rural community in the Netherlands, a background that shapes her commitment to inclusive communication and to amplifying localized voices in how societies interpret and engage with the past. She trained in Public Archaeology at Leiden University (2011–2014) and earned a PhD in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies from Rutgers University (2020). Her doctoral research focuses on the Banda Islands in Indonesia through a cultural landscape framework, advancing a polyvocal and community-centered approach to heritage management that bridges nature and culture, past and present, and human and more-than-human relations. Her forthcoming monograph, Navigating Polyvocal Heritage in a Postcolonial Cultural Landscape: The Banda Islands (Routledge, 2026), reflects more than a decade of sustained engagement with community partners, their histories, and landscapes.

Since 2021, she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) at the University of Luxembourg. There, she develops multilingual public history initiatives for the postindustrial city of Esch-sur-Alzette in collaboration with Thomas Cauvin. This work has been shortlisted for the EU Prize for Citizen Science (2024) and the FNR Prize for Outstanding Promotion of Science to the Public (2023). In 2023, she received the FNR Flagship Grant to establish historesch.lu, a national platform for public history. She is active in the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) and the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), and she is co-editing Powerful Silences in Public History for the Routledge Global Perspectives on Public History series (2026).

As Treasurer for the 2026–2029 term, Joëlla brings practical experience with the administrative and legal framework in Luxembourg—where the IFPH headquarters are based—alongside a strong local support network that supports continuity and compliance. She understands public history as a facilitative practice and brings this ethos to financial stewardship, ensuring that budgets and spending align with strategic priorities, support inclusive programming, and advance the participation of early-career scholars and colleagues from underrepresented and underfunded regions. Strengthening collaboration with the Early Career Group and enhancing membership benefits are among her priorities, including support for developing a transparent and equitable book review system with the journal editors to expand access to publications and publication opportunities.

The IFPH warmly welcomes Joëlla van Donkersgoed as Treasurer for 2026–2029 and looks forward to her contributions to the Federation’s long-term sustainability and its growth as an inclusive, multilingual, and internationally connected public history community.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Jimena Perry (January 31, 2026). Joëlla van Donkersgoed Elected and Ratified as Treasurer of the International Federation for Public History. IFPH-FIHP. Retrieved February 11, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15lkg


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