The Huibregtsen Prize is awarded for a recent research project that combines scientific quality and innovation with significant societal impact. One of the six nominees is Professor of Cultural History Inger Leemans. In addition to being a Professor of Cultural History at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities, Leemans is also the lead researcher at NL-Lab within the KNAW Humanities Cluster.
The research project
"Scent is a vehicle for memories and a powerful means of communication. Yet, scent is a topic that has been scarcely researched, partly due to its fleeting nature." As the head of the pan-European, transdisciplinary research project Odeuropa, Leemans has ensured that scent is taken more seriously worldwide as part of cultural heritage. Odeuropa builds on the pioneering work of scent historian Caro Verbeek in the VU project "In Search of Scents Lost"
History of Scent
Through the development of digital methods for 'sensory data mining,' more than 2.4 million historical 'nose-witness accounts' in text and image have been made accessible for research and analysis. An article in the prestigious American Historical Review, advocating for 'embodied learning' and accompanied by a scratch-and-sniff card, marked a breakthrough. Scents from the past have been reconstructed, so we now know what it smelled like on the battlefield of Waterloo and the scent of the powder used to embalm William of Orange. In collaboration with various museums, the Odeuropa team has demonstrated how valuable scent can be in storytelling. In 2017, VU Amsterdam organized the exhibition "Aromatic Art (Re)constructed."
Read about the other nominees on the Huibregtsenprijs website.