dr. N (Naomi) Oosterman

Biography

Naomi Oosterman is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, and Cluster Manager of the research group Heritage under Threat; part of the Centre for Global Heritage and Development. Her research interests are the illicit trade of arts and antiquities (with a particular focus on Latin America), the policing of art and heritage crimes, and contested and colonial heritage. She has published widely on these topics. She is the editor (with Dr. Donna Yates) of the volumes Crime and art: Sociological and criminological perspectives of crimes in the art world and Art Crime in Context, which were the first volumes dedicated to the sociological and criminological study of art and heritage crimes. In 2024, she published the volume (with Camila Malig Jedlicki and Dr. Rodrigo Christofoletti) Colonial heritage, conflict, and contestation: Negotiating decolonisation in Latin America which explores, among other things, the relationship between the illicit trafficking of cultural objects and decolonial thought. With Liselore Tissen (Leiden/Delft University) and Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba (Rijksacademie) she developed and worked on the project 3D reproduction methods in contested heritage that explores the possible uses of 3D printing of cultural objects in restitution and repatriation debates. Currently, she is the PI of the LDE Global Initiative project titled Policing the Illicit Trade in Cultural Objects: A pilot in Argentina, which examines decision-making processes and attitudes of public policing actors in the policing of art and heritage crimes. 

She has consulted for several public organisations, including the European Commission, ICF and the International Scientific Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) of which she is also a member of the Illicit Trafficking Working Group. She has been an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies since December 2022, and has been elected and appointed Vice-President of Research Chapters as of June 2024. She is the co-lead of the research chapter dedicated to Latin America and the Caribbean of the same association.

Naomi teaches courses on social science methods, coordinated the Bachelor Graduation Project, co-coordinates the Master Thesis Class, and supervises master theses. She is one of the developers of the joint Leiden-Delft-Erasmus minor Authenticity and Art Crime: Methods, Materials, and the Market, in which she developed, and currently coordinates, the course Crime and Disruption in the Art Market. 

Naomi Oosterman studied Social Work (BA, 2010, cum laude) at the University of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam; Arts and Culture Studies (MA, 2013) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Social Research (MA, 2014) at Goldsmiths, University of London. She completed her PhD in Criminology at City, University of London (2014-2019).