In 2022 en 2023, VOX-POP hosted the public lecture series Eastsplainers. As the Russian war in Ukraine and imperialist Kremlin rhetoric continue to disturb world media, Eastsplainers offers a counterweight to 'westsplaining' – the habit of looking at developments in Central and Eastern Europe through Western lenses. In this public lecture series, we listen to intellectuals and artists who fled from the Russian war in Ukraine or who fled or migrated from Łódź, Minsk, and Moscow, among other places, to the Netherlands.
In 2022, our former student assistant Julia Visser started the Red Light Heritage project at VOX-POP. By approaching sex work as possible intangible heritage, the project aimed to make an original contribution to the critical debate about the disappearance of sex work from the Red Light District. This developed into the creation of an interdisciplinary research group in collaboration with NICA with three seminars in Paleis van de Weemoed that explored the idea of "sex-work as (intangible) heritage". In addition, we organized two cultural public programs in VOX-POP. Through music, performance, academic debate, but especially in dialogue with you, we presented the findings of the research group and explored the politics of heritage.
Did you know that the University of Amsterdam has the largest collection of petunia genotypes in the world? In April 2023, together with the faculties of the Humanities and Natural Sciences we presented CROSS-POLLINATIONS, a digital heritage project encompassing both an online platform as well as a physical exhibition at VOX-POP. During this exhibition you had the chance to marvel at a part of UvA’s unique petunia collection. In addition, the exhibition was accompanied by an extensive public programme, including panel talks, a lecture series, guided tours, botanical drawing workshops and more. The programme further explored the richness of the University of Amsterdam’s scientific research on flowers and plants, from a variety of perspectives – artistic, historical, cultural and scientific.