Mirrors and Windows 2022

After 20 times putting together a year report, we decided it was time to do things differently: instead we did the year report as a podcast. EXARC Chair Dr Peter Inker leads our director Roeland Paardekooper through the year that passed. Of course we also comment on the future! For our more than 400 members around the world, 2022 has been a difficult year, where the ones who could respond quickest to the changing circumstances were successful. This counts for museums, freelancers, students, craftspeople, and university members. But work could not stop: museums kept on building, experiments were executed and school groups as well as tourists were entertained with living history. On the EXARC website, we showcased 300 events worldwide, and the EXARC Journal has 180,000 reads per year, all open access. We welcome fresh ideas from countries like Brazil and also look at sustainability, more broadly than just climate change. 

Peter is the Director of Historical Research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, home to the largest outdoor living history museum in the United States. He began his academic career as an archaeologist, with a research concentration in Migration Period culture change identifiable through metalworking techniques. His recent work has been in museum and heritage environments, including working with virtual and augmented reality.

Roeland has been working in the field of archaeological reconstructions and open-air museums since 1981. He studied prehistoric archaeology of Europe at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and did his PhD in archaeological open-air museums at the University of Exeter (UK). Roeland's EXARC profile.