Welcome to the Newsletter February 2026
After a relaxing winter break, the Re/Presenting Europe team is excited to kick off the new calendar year. We’re looking forward to a year full of new opportunities and events, including ESSHN and more.
Welcoming F. Zehra Çolak
We are delighted to welcome F. Zehra Çolak as the new Leader of the Education Research Team.
F. Zehra Çolak is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer focusing on educational inequities and youth belonging. Her work uses critical, participatory approaches to explore justice-oriented pedagogies in urban schools and community spaces.
We would also like to warmly thank Elwin Savelsbergh for his leadership of Education Research Team in the past. His work and dedication have made an important contribution to the development of the project.
Re/Presenting Europe Recommends:
Congratulations to Prof. Jacco van Sterkenburg who was appointed as the new Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) with effect from 1 February 2026.
Prof. Jacco van Sterkenburg: “An equitable an inclusive university is key in fostering a sense of belonging amongst diverse staff and students. This will also further stimulate academic creativity and collaboration. As the new Chief Diversity Officer, I am happy to be part of this process, together with the entire IDEA team and the EUR-community. Building trust, listening, helping to make the university an inclusive and equitable place for all; these will be main concerns for me and the team in the time to come.“
Jody Metcalfe receives a van Oostrom Grant!
Jody Metcalfe’s application for the van Oostrom Grant has been approved, a grant that supports early-career researchers doing innovative work in the humanities. Her project investigates how intergenerational transmission of culture—through music, food, language, and storytelling—challenges colonial narratives and supports processes of communal and ancestral healing. Centring co-creation with artists, community organisers, historians, and memory practitioners, the study foregrounds multiple modes of knowledge creation about anticolonial resistance in South Africa.
Upcoming events
This past December, the Groninger Museum opened a new exhibition exploring the borderless creativity of hip hop. Curated by guest curator Rieke Vos in collaboration with Dennis Kok and Sherlock Telgt, the show highlights the influence of hip hop culture on visual art over the past forty years, spanning art, fashion, design, language, music, dance, and graffiti. Featuring iconic and new works by artists such as Martha Cooper, Arthur Jafa, Iris Kensmil, Mick La Rock, Dana Lixenberg, and Rammellzee, the exhibition runs from 20 December 2025 to 10 May 2026 at the Groninger Museum, Museumeiland 1, Groningen.
Webinar series: Critical Perspectives on Anti-Racism in Education, guest edited by F. Zehra Çolak and Leila Mouhib.
After 2 succesful sessions on “Embodying the Labour, Joy and Politics of Anti-Racist Pedagogies”, and ”Researching Anti-Racism, Youth Resistance and Whiteness in Schools’ there is the final one coming up end of February:
On the 27th of February from 16:00-17:00, Decolonization as Praxis: On Safe(r) Spaces and Counter-Narratives.
Publications
Çolak, F. Z., Bourabain, D., Essanhaji, Z., Sahin, O., & van Veen, D. (2025: Joy as a technology of resistance and freedom: critical insights from racialized scholars in academia. Read Here.
Çolak, F. Z., Lozano Parra, S., & Wansink, B. (2025): “I Just Get a Different Feeling in This Class”: Belonging as Affective Praxis at a Dutch Urban Secondary Education School. Read Here.
Çolak, F. Z. & Mouhib. L. (2025): Towards critical anti-racist praxis in education: interdisciplinary perspectives on studying and doing anti-racism. Read Here.
Lynch, D., Fraai T., Hendriksma J., Noordzij S. & Sing Rai S. (2025): The latest article based on a participatory action research (PAR) study exploring the sense of belonging of Dutch Caribbean students in the Netherlands has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies. Read Here.
An opinion piece by Jan Bant and Karym Leito, published in the Dutch newspaper Trouw, highlights how Curaçao’s football team, recently the smallest country ever to qualify for the men’s World Cup, makes the island’s postcolonial legacy visible.
Previous events
From podcast to practice: Joy in Academia
As part of the Disrupting Sameness in Dutch Academia mini-conference at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Daudi Veen and F. Zehra Çolak, PhD facilitated the workshop “Imagining Academia Otherwise.” Building on themes from the Joy in Academia podcast, the workshop invited participants to explore how joy can be found, or reclaimed, within academic spaces that are often unwelcoming to marginalized communities.
Through creative methods such as drawing and poetry, participants reflected on belonging, community, and collective care, highlighting how these practices help sustain joy while navigating activism, research, and teaching.
Final lecture in the series “50 Years of Surinamese Independence”
The lecture series “50 Years of Surinamese Independence: Histories, Legacies, and Heritages” concluded with a powerful talk by Jonathan Tjien Fooh. His lecture explored the coloniality of silence in narratives of Javanese indentured labor, challenging Eurocentric notions of voice and historical representation. By weaving together critical theory with personal and family histories, he offered new perspectives on marginalized pasts and the production of historical knowledge.
The series was organized by Debby Esmeé de Vlugt and brought together scholars, students, and the wider public to reflect on Suriname’s (anti/de/post)colonial histories. Several lectures were co-organized by Dr. Jody Metcalfe, with financial support from the Van Oostrom Grant.
Hiphop Knowledge Circle on the move: from LKCA to Emoves
On Friday 12 December, the Hiphop Knowledge Circle met for the first time at Emoves, marking an important transition after eight years. The LKCA formally handed over the facilitating role to the hiphop scene itself. Claudia Marinelli (LKCA) reflected on years of knowledge-sharing and collaboration, acknowledged co-initiator Simon Mamahit for his long-standing commitment, and passed the baton to ‘Drosha’ (Andrey Grekhov), Artistic Director of Emoves.
