Prof. dr. Corinne Hofman

Position:
  • Professor in Caribbean archaeology
Expertise:
  • Caribbean
  • island archaeology
  • mobility and exchange
  • geochemical analyses
  • pre-colonial cosmovision


Telephone number: +31 (0)71 527 2449
E-Mail: c.l.hofman@arch.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department: Faculteit Archeologie, Caribbean and Amazonia
Office Address: WSD
Reuvensplaats 3-4
2311 BE Leiden
Room number 0.14
Personal Homepage: www.archaeology.leiden.edu/​organisation/​hofman.jsp


Corinne Hofman is professor of Caribbean archaeology and director of the Caribbean Research Group at Leiden University, the largest of its kind worldwide. After obtaining a BA degree in art history and archaeology at the Vrije Universiteit, Brussels, she completed her MA in pre-Columbian archaeology at Leiden University in 1987 with a research focus on the Caribbean. Her MA research focused on the archaeology of Saba, Dutch Caribbean. Continuing her archaeological research on Saba during her PhD, she wrote her dissertation on the ceramic chronology of Saba. Since then her investigations and teaching focus on the archaeology and history of the Caribbean.

Hofman has conducted fieldwork throughout the Caribbean archipelago. Her various research projects have included excavations together with Dr. Menno Hoogland in Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Martin, Antigua (Long Island), the Guadeloupian archipelago, St. Lucia, Martinique, St. Vincent, Curaçao, and the Dominican Republic. Furthermore, her research projects have incorporated provenance studies, bioarchaeological investigations, ethnohistoric and ethnographic studies on many other islands of the insular Caribbean.   Since 1998, Hofman has obtained numerous prestigious research grants, amongst which an ASPASIA-grant (2003-2008) by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific (NWO), a NWO VIDI-grant (2004-2009), and a NWO VICI-grant (2008-2013). The main research themes pursued and developed throughout these multi-disciplinary projects are Sociopolitical Organisation, Settlement patterns, Mobility and Exchange. Hofman’s projects are designed to contribute to the historical awareness and valorisation of cultural heritage in the geopolitically diverse islandscape of the Caribbean.   In 2012, Hofman was awarded a NWO open competition grant entitled “Island Networks: modeling inter-community social relationships in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide (AD 1000-1800)” and the highly prestigious ERC Synergy grant “Nexus 1492: New World Encounters in a Globalising World”. The latter projects will be carried out in collaboration with three other Principle Investigators, Prof. dr. Gareth Davies (VU University Amsterdam, Geochemistry), Prof. dr. Ulrik Brandes (University of Konstanz, Network Science), and Prof. dr. Willem Willems (Leiden University, Cultural Heritage Management). The two projects broach the theme of Colonial Encounters in the Caribbean, the nexus of the first encounters between the New and the Old World, with a focus on the indigenous perspective. Hofman has an extensive network of international collaborators, and over the years the Caribbean Research Group has generated a large number of BA, MA, PhD and postdoctoral multi-disciplinary projects.

Research Projects:

Last Modified: 15-03-2013