The core team consists of the programme director, the programme coordinator and four lecturers, all combining academic and professional expertise. The core team is supported by a programme secretary who is the liaison between staff and (prospective) students. The core team is responsible for the lectures and seminars on the main concepts used in academic and professional discourse about socially engaged museum and heritage practice in a globalised context, including issues of sustainability, inclusivity and digitality. The core team members either have full teaching qualifications or are currently in the process of obtaining these. The core team members either have a doctorate, or are doctoral candidates.
All lecturers are fluent in English, internationally oriented and socially engaged, but have divergent areas of expertise. The programme director, prof dr. Hester Dibbits, is a cultural historian and ethnologist by education, and brings in relevant research expertise and networks. As the head of the research group for cultural heritage at the Reinwardt Academy and endowed professor at the History Department of the Erasmus University, she is the initiator and leader of several research projects in the realm of museums and heritage, some of which are co-financed by NWO and NWA. In collaboration with Marlous Willemsen, director of the heritage organization Imagine IC and member of the research group, Hester Dibbits developed the method of emotion networking, which has found its way into the field. 25 Within the framework of the master programme, this method will be among the instruments that are critically assessed as examples of intervention tools used by heritage professionals. The research groups was highly favourably assessed in 2018.
The knowledge and expertise of the core team will be supplemented further by occasional lectures from other Reinwardt lecturers, who may have specialist knowledge in fields such as information management, education, project management and history. These lecturers hold at least a master’s degree and need to be near-fluent in English. Reinwardt Academy invests in the professional development of its staff through peer feedback, collective lecturing and team meetings, where evaluations are discussed. In addition, some of the lecturers have attended educational training and refresher courses offered by the Amsterdam School of the Arts. The Reinwardt Academy regularly holds in-service training days geared to the professionalisation of the lecturer team.
The Reinwardt Academy has built a vast network of partner organisations and like-minded professionals in the museum and heritage field, many of whom have been affiliated with the Reinwardt Academy for several years. From this network, guest speakers can readily be invited to guarantee the academic and professional quality of the curriculum in relation to current practice. Through this focus on professionals with an intellectual or theoretical interest, rather than academic theorists, students gain an understanding of the connection between doing and thinking, while also encountering the diversity of professional practices, being the combination of theory, practice, and ethics. In addition to guest lecturers who are formally invited on the bases of curriculum content, AMHS often hosts ad hoc lectures and workshops by international speakers who are available by chance. Students are invited to these.
