Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Ugo Petronin
2025-2026
Discipline(s)
Anthropology and ethnology
Arts and arts studies
Information and communication sciences
Sociology
Theme(s)
Inequalities, inclusion & Social Innovation
Post-colonialism
Public Policies
Visual Arts
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Ugo is a Nouveau Grand Tour Fellow at NIAS during 2025-2026 (July 2025).
Ugo Petronin is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work explores how imaging technologies shape perception and knowledge. Combining technical experimentation, poetic inquiry, and ethnographic research, his films investigate how disruptions in visual and cognitive systems can open new ways of seeing and relating.
Inductive and concept-driven, his creative process revolves around fluidity, confusion, and regeneration: both as central themes and as working methods to generate new aesthetics.
His films have been presented internationally at IFFR, Ji.hlava, Oberhausen, Kasseler Dokfest, IndieLisboa, and in venues including Eye Filmmuseum, Goethe Institute, HKU, Yamagata University, and V2_Lab. Based in Rotterdam, he is the co-founder of Stichting Rod & Cone Film.
His artistic research has been supported by the Mondriaan Fonds, CBK Rotterdam, Netherlands Film Fonds, NIAS, and the Institut Français NL.
Research Project
Benevolences: regeneration ideal in colonial practices
Research question: How have the ideas of benevolence and regeneration been mobilised within domestic colonialism?
Benevolences is a fiction film project that explores the ideological interplay between benevolence, regeneration, and colonialism. Grounded in historical research, it investigates how these ideals were mobilised in domestic colonial projects to regulate and reform marginalised populations.
The film takes as its point of departure the Dutch Colonies of Benevolence: a 19th-century initiative that sought to combine agricultural labour with moral reform. The project examines the ethical contradictions inherent in these institutions, where intentions of care coexisted with coercion, and benevolent reform was entangled with spatial and social segregation.
Rather than offering a historical reconstruction, the film interprets the emotional and ideological afterlives of such systems, tracing how they may persist in contemporary narratives, values, and social practices. It questions how frameworks rooted in colonial logic and paternalism continue to shape current understandings of welfare, regeneration, and social order.
The research draws on the work of former NIAS fellows on the Colonies of Benevolence and domestic agrarian colonialism.
Research Interests:
Domestic colonialism; benevolence and social control; Dutch Colonies of Benevolence; colonial paternalism and welfare; ideological afterlives of reform systems