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Prof. Dr. Sophie Elpers

Sophie Elpers

SIEF Executive Vice President

Institution: Meertens Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam & University of Antwerp

Sophie Elpers is a senior researcher at the Meertens Institute (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) in Amsterdam and Professor of Intangible Heritage and Ethnology at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She also teaches critical heritage and museum studies at the University of Bonn, Germany.

Trained as an ethnologist in Bonn and Amsterdam, she received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2014 with a thesis on the reconstruction of farmhouses in the Netherlands after World War II. Sophie worked as a researcher at the Dutch Open Air Museum/Institute for Historical Farm Research in Arnhem (NL) before joining the staff of the Meertens Institute in 2007. The Institute has hosted the SIEF secretariat and archive for more than two decades.

Sophie's current research focuses on the politics and dynamics of intangible cultural heritage, contemporary everyday life in rural areas, and vernacular architecture.

Between 2016 and 2022, Sophie was also a senior researcher at the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage/Dutch Open Air Museum, where she conducted research on the relationship between tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Due to her expertise in the field of cultural heritage, she is Vice-Chair of the Expert Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage in Germany and a member of the Administrative Board of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. She is one pf the senior editors of SIEF's open access journal Cultural Analysis and one of the editors of Volkskunde, the Dutch/Flemish journal of ethnology and folklore research. She has authored and co-authored books and articles, and co-edited volumes and special issues on vernacular architecture, national symbols, intangible cultural heritage and museums.

SIEF Directory: https://www.siefhome.org/members/sief/5865