Rosemarijn Hoefte is a historian specialized in the Caribbean. She is Professor in the history of Suriname after 1873 in comparative perspective at the University of Amsterdam. Her main research interests are the history of postabolition Suriname, migration and unfree labor, contemporary Caribbean history, and nation building and nation branding in postcolonial states. Her current projects are a study of Surinamese social activist and politician Grace Schneiders-Howard and an analysis of nation building and nation branding across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Rosemarijn Hoefte studied History at Leiden University, and Latin American Studies (MA 1982) and History (PhD 1987) at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Her dissertation was on British Indian and Javanese indentured labor on the largest plantation in Suriname. In 2006 she received a four-year NWO grant to study the history of twentieth-century Suriname. The synthesis of this research project, Suriname in the long twentieth century, was published in 2014. In 2010, she coordinated a three-country oral history project on the cultural heritage of Surinamese Javanese. She has (co-)organized workshops on (post)colonial biographies (University of Groningen, 2007), the Three Guianas: Similarities and differences (KITLV 2013), the Javanese diaspora (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta 2013), and Transnationalism, reform movements, and decolonization in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean (KITLV 2018). In addition to monographs and edited volumes, she has published more than 100 articles on the Caribbean and Latin America in scholarly books and journals, and the popular press. 

Rosemarijn has wide-ranging research interests. In ‘Departing from Java’ on the Javanese diaspora she focuses on Javanese labor, migration, and diaspora as a global phenomenon. She also is working on a study of the life and times of Grace Schneiders-Howard, a social activist and the first female politician in Suriname. Recently she was the principal investigator in the studies of the colonial history of Haarlem and the colonial and postcolonial history of Tilburg. Hoefte is charge of the KITLV Publication program with Brill Academic Publishers and she is the editor-in-chief of the New West Indian Guide, the oldest journal on the Caribbean. She is a past president of the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH).  

Selected Publications

Selected publications 2022.

With Natalia Scurrah, ‘Institutional bricolage and the (re)shaping of communal land tenure arrangements: Two contrasting cases in upland and lowland Northeastern Laos’, World Development 147, 2021. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105630

With Natalia Scurrah, ‘Farmer’s agency and institutional bricolage in land use plan implementation in upland Laos’, Land Use Policy 104, 2021. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105316.

With Jonas Kramp, ‘(Un)making the upland: Resettlement, rubber and land use planning in Namai village, Laos’, Journal of Peasant Studies 49-1: 78-100, 2022.

With Jonathan Rigg, ‘Aspirations undone: Hydropower and the (re)shaping of livelihood pathways in Northern Laos’, Agriculture and Human Values 38-4: 963-969, 2021.

With Ayemyaing Nawaye & Natalia Scurrah, ‘Scalar politics, power struggles and institutional emergence in Daw Lar Lake, Myanmar’, Journal of Rural Studies 87: 32-44, 2021.

With Jessica DiCarlo, Oulavanh Keovilignavong, Jonathan Rigg & Alan Nicol, ‘(Re)constructing state power and livelihoods through the Laos-China Railway project’, Geoforum 124: 79-88, 2021.

With Saw John Bright & Casper Palmano, ‘The politics of legal pluralism in the shaping of spatial power in Myanmar’s land governance’, Journal of Peasant Studies 48-2: 411-435, 2021.

With Jonathan Rigg, Marcel Bandur, Melissa Marschke, Michelle Miller, Noudsavanh Pheuangsavanh, Mayvong Sayatham & David Taylor, ‘On the coattails of globalization: COVID-19, migrants and migration in Asia’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47-1: 88-109, 2021.

With Carl Middleton, ‘The Salween River as a transboundary common: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint 61-2: 301-314, 2020.

With Emma Karki, ‘Spatial politics and local alliances shaping Nepal hydropower’, World Development 122: 525-536, 2019.