Dr Csilla Ariese is temporarily filling in for Dr Mariana Françoco as leader of the ERC Starting Grant BRASILIAE. Indigenous Knowledge in the Making of Science: Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648).

More information about Csilla Ariese

Research

Temporarily filling in for Dr. Mariana Françoco as leader of the ERC Starting Grant BRASILIAE. Indigenous Knowledge in the Making of Science: Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648). 

BRASILIAE takes the book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae  published in 1648 by Piso and Marcgraf as its central focus. The HNB is one of the most comprehensive products of the encounter between early modern European scholarship and Brazilian indigenous knowledge. In an encyclopaedic format, it brings together information about the natural world, linguistics, and geography of Brazil as understood and experienced by indigenous Tupi peoples, enslaved Africans, Luso-Brazilians, and the Dutch colonisers. Its method of construction embodies the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial settings across the globe, and is the earliest example of such in Brazil. The BRASILIAE project investigates how indigenous knowledge was collected, registered, understood, and transformed into European science by focusing on ethnobotanics, ethnozoology, and indigenous material culture.

Teaching activities

Supervisor for the MA Museum Studies track: thesis supervision & internship supervision. 

Curriculum vitae

Csilla E. Ariese is a museologist specializing in community engagement and decoloniality. 

She was a postdoctoral researcher within the Horizon2020 ECHOES project (2018-2021, University of Amsterdam) during which she studied the decolonial practices and processes of the Amsterdam Museum, as well as the impact of these on the museum's visitors. She previously completed her PhD as part of the ERC-Synergy project NEXUS1492 (2013-2018, Leiden University). Her dissertation ‘The Social Museum in the Caribbean’ (Sidestone Press 2018) explored 195 Caribbean museums and the practices and processes through which they engage with a diversity of communities.

Ariese is co-founder and treasurer of the VALUE Foundation which is positioned on the crossroads of gaming and academia. 

Besides her PhD, she holds an MSc in International Museum Studies from Gothenburg University and at the same university completed a BA in archaeology with a specialization in maritime archaeology.

Csilla is a storyteller at heart, who is passionate about shipwrecks, ruins, the underwater world, games and museums.

Publications

Activities