Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Roxana Coman
2025-2026
Discipline(s)
Anthropology and ethnology
Arts and arts studies
Colonial and postcolonial history
Cultural studies
Theme(s)
Cultural Studies
Identity
Migration
Post-colonialism
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Dr. Roxana Coman's research engages with two major topics, shaped by her work as a curator in the Bucharest Municipality Museum (2016-2022): Ottoman era material culture (17th-18th centuries), and museums, private collection in (post)Ottoman Southeast Europe. Dr. Coman received her PhD (September 2016) with the support of an EU doctoral fellowship, hosted at the Institute of South-east European Studies, Bucharest (June 2014-October 2015). Her research has received funding from the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florenz-Studienkurs (September 2018), the Forum Transregionale Studien-Transregional Academy (September 2021), the Orient-Institut Istanbul, postdoctoral fellowship (March-December 2022), an EuroWeb Cost Action STSM grant, at the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture (May-June 2023). She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London, and member of GTOT.
Research Project
Collecting Islamic artefacts and searching for a national identity in British Mandate Jerusalem: Marcu Beza between Neo Byzantinism and Exoticism.
Research question: How do we engage with the in-betweenness of people moving between former regions of the Ottoman empire, where material culture becomes the source for assessing mobility and national projects?
Roxana Coman’s research engages with the growing scholarly interest in museum institutional histories, provenance, and decolonisation, particularly in relation to the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Building on this shift, she focuses on the largely overlooked case of a private collection assembled during the interwar period by Marcu Beza, who served as the General Consul of Romania in Jerusalem.
During his travels—tracing Romanian presence(s) across Asia Minor, Mount Athos, Istanbul, Cyprus, Mount Sinai, and beyond—Beza gathered a diverse range of artefacts, which were displayed in his Jerusalem quarters as a small private museum. The collection is notably eclectic, comprising textiles, metalwork, religious objects (both Islamic and Orthodox), furniture, jewellery, and watercolours.
Combining archival research with museum and critical heritage studies, Coman examines figures like Beza as intermediary agents operating within (post)imperial spaces of the former Ottoman world. Through this lens, she analyses how material culture reveals narratives of mobility, nation-building, inter-imperial exchange, and enduring imperial legacies.
Research Interests:
Museum provenance and decolonization; Ottoman material culture; interwar collecting practices; mobility and nation-building; post-imperial heritage studies