A. (Anya) Naumova

Anya Naumova is a PhD researcher at Campus Fryslân, the University of Groningen’s multidisciplinary faculty in Leeuwarden. She holds a BA in Film Studies from Moscow and an MA in Heritage Studies from Amsterdam. Before her PhD, she worked at the archive of Het Nieuwe Instituut and developed cultural programming in asylum seekers’ centres (AZCs).

Her areas of expertise include critical heritage studies, labour migration, memory, critical whiteness studies, art and participatory research. Her current research examines how labour migration to Friesland during industrialisation (1960s–1980s) is remembered through heritage and political narratives. It asks what role whiteness played in that history, and how it shapes the framing and governance of labour migration from Eastern Europe today.

Her work combines archival research, exhibition analysis and interviews,  participatory, creative and reflexive methods. She is a member of the IMISCOE PhD Academy and the Netherlands Chapter of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies.