It’s wonderful to see this book is finally out and I am pleased to have contributed a chapter to this important collection. The book comes out of a 2-day conference from 2021. This was the first academic conference that I attended in the Netherlands after the move from Sheffield and the first in-person conference after COVID-19 restrictions. For me personally the conference was also a testing ground for some of my then developing ideas on the tourism geographies of slavery and colonial heritage in relation to cultural memory politics. I was a social scientist trying to mingle with folks from the Humanities and I did wonder how my ideas would land. In the end I needn’t have worried. I found a very welcoming group of scholars and colleagues who made me feel right at home. I was therefore happy when I got invited to contribute a chapter to this edited volume.

Many thanks to the wonderful editors – Marrigje Paijmans and Karwan Fatah-Black – for seeing this book project to the end, and thanks to the other authors for contributing to make this an excellent collection. My contribution was made possible through the NWO Veni Grant that I received.

You can check out the abstract of my chapter below. The book is also published Open Access so you can download it for free