Ine Beljaars

Supervisor: Dr. Becki Ross / Dr. Annette Henry
Graduate Student Group

About

MA cum laude, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, the Netherlands (2014)
BA, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, the Netherlands (2012)

Biography

Drawing on the social sciences and the humanities, Ine’s interdisciplinary research interests are embedded within the anthropology of dance, performance studies, sociology, cultural studies, and feminist, postcolonial and race critical theory. Her research interests include gender, race, class, sexuality, the politics of difference, urban music and dance cultures, Western popular culture, and Western Europe, North-America and the Caribbean.

Ine’s interests in dance originates from her love for music (Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, pop and classical) which in turn sparked her academic interest in musical migration, and the ideologies and politics within and behind movement aesthetics. Within her cultural anthropology undergraduate studies, Ine specialized geographically in the Caribbean and studied the history of jazz alongside the curriculum. Her bachelor thesis studied the transnational flows of salsa through a case study of the Japanese salsa scene and the processes of sameness/difference within that scene. In her Master’s degree, Ine specialized in the M.A. track “Global Economy and Culture”, which studied cultural flows and unequal processes of globalization in-depth. Consequently, within her M.A. research, Ine studied the social production of difference within the kizomba scene in the Netherlands. A recipient of the Faculty of Arts Graduate Award at the University of British Columbia, a Webster Fellow at Green College, and runner-up for the LOVA/Marjan Rens Thesis Award in 2015 for best thesis in the Netherlands on gender and feminist anthropology, her book “Body Politics” is currently being used as course material within one of the first year anthropology courses at Leiden University.

Ine is fascinated by music and dance cultures as they constitute a major (and often neglected) part of social life where ideologies and power im/balances, values, norms and identities can be performed and played with, contested, magnified, solidified and/or reiterated.


Research

Research

Ine’s doctoral research builds upon her BA and MA research, and interrogates what it means that white Dutch increasingly turn to Afro-diasporic partner dances, such as salsa, kizomba, semba, and bachata for personal expression and identity negotiation. She thereby questions what the materialization of salsa and kizomba in the Netherlands means in terms of cultural (ex)change and appropriation, postcolonial race relations, modernity, the body, and cosmopolitanism. Dutch whiteness has a particular critical focus, especially the ways in which differing white notions of modernity and cosmopolitanism are worked through the body and the bodily. As such, this dissertation aims to contribute to and possibly intervene in contemporary debates in the anthropology of dance and performance studies, the sociology of race and critical whiteness studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.

Another topic of great interest for Ine includes the contemporary normalization of the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies, particularly of the “booty” body part as a recurring trope within contemporary Western popular culture, including in hip-hop, rap, and pop music videos and lyrics, social media and “twerkout” studios. Interested in why females are participating in these processes deliberately themselves, Ine seeks to understand how forms of self-objectification affects women and gender relations differently and aims to take stock of where we stand today in terms of gender equality, emancipation and liberation within Western popular culture, the music industry, and in society at large. She warmly welcomes discussions along any of these lines.


Publications

Selected Publications

Beljaars, I. (2016) “Body Politics. The Social Production of Difference in the Dutch Kizomba Dance Scene. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, Maklu.

Beljaars, I. (2016) “Difference-Making in the Dutch Kizomba Scene” LOVA, the Netherlands Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology, 36: 26-37.


Awards

2016 Graduate Entrance Scholarship, UBC |2016 R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellowship |2016 International Tuition Award |2013 Field Research Stipend, Leiden University |2012 M.A. Tuition Award from “Besty Perk-Opleidingsfonds”, Tesselschade Arbeid-Adelt, the Netherlands


Additional Description

ubc.academia.edu/IneBeljaars



https://ubc.academia.edu/IneBeljaars















Ine Beljaars is PhD candidate at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Ine is a feminist, anti-racist cultural anthropologist interested in how power and ideology re/produce difference and inequality intersectionally along the lines of gender, race, class and sexuality within Western popular culture and the cultural industries. Interested in urban performance and the performative mechanisms in which they are embedded, Ine takes the micropolitics of the body and the bodily as points of departure to study the politics of difference. Her main field of inquiry includes Afro-diasporic dance and music cultures, including but not limited to salsa, kizomba, rap, hip-hop and jazz.


Ine Beljaars

Supervisor: Dr. Becki Ross / Dr. Annette Henry
Graduate Student Group

About

MA cum laude, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, the Netherlands (2014)
BA, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, the Netherlands (2012)

Biography

Drawing on the social sciences and the humanities, Ine’s interdisciplinary research interests are embedded within the anthropology of dance, performance studies, sociology, cultural studies, and feminist, postcolonial and race critical theory. Her research interests include gender, race, class, sexuality, the politics of difference, urban music and dance cultures, Western popular culture, and Western Europe, North-America and the Caribbean.

Ine’s interests in dance originates from her love for music (Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, pop and classical) which in turn sparked her academic interest in musical migration, and the ideologies and politics within and behind movement aesthetics. Within her cultural anthropology undergraduate studies, Ine specialized geographically in the Caribbean and studied the history of jazz alongside the curriculum. Her bachelor thesis studied the transnational flows of salsa through a case study of the Japanese salsa scene and the processes of sameness/difference within that scene. In her Master’s degree, Ine specialized in the M.A. track “Global Economy and Culture”, which studied cultural flows and unequal processes of globalization in-depth. Consequently, within her M.A. research, Ine studied the social production of difference within the kizomba scene in the Netherlands. A recipient of the Faculty of Arts Graduate Award at the University of British Columbia, a Webster Fellow at Green College, and runner-up for the LOVA/Marjan Rens Thesis Award in 2015 for best thesis in the Netherlands on gender and feminist anthropology, her book “Body Politics” is currently being used as course material within one of the first year anthropology courses at Leiden University.

Ine is fascinated by music and dance cultures as they constitute a major (and often neglected) part of social life where ideologies and power im/balances, values, norms and identities can be performed and played with, contested, magnified, solidified and/or reiterated.


Research

Research

Ine’s doctoral research builds upon her BA and MA research, and interrogates what it means that white Dutch increasingly turn to Afro-diasporic partner dances, such as salsa, kizomba, semba, and bachata for personal expression and identity negotiation. She thereby questions what the materialization of salsa and kizomba in the Netherlands means in terms of cultural (ex)change and appropriation, postcolonial race relations, modernity, the body, and cosmopolitanism. Dutch whiteness has a particular critical focus, especially the ways in which differing white notions of modernity and cosmopolitanism are worked through the body and the bodily. As such, this dissertation aims to contribute to and possibly intervene in contemporary debates in the anthropology of dance and performance studies, the sociology of race and critical whiteness studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.

Another topic of great interest for Ine includes the contemporary normalization of the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies, particularly of the “booty” body part as a recurring trope within contemporary Western popular culture, including in hip-hop, rap, and pop music videos and lyrics, social media and “twerkout” studios. Interested in why females are participating in these processes deliberately themselves, Ine seeks to understand how forms of self-objectification affects women and gender relations differently and aims to take stock of where we stand today in terms of gender equality, emancipation and liberation within Western popular culture, the music industry, and in society at large. She warmly welcomes discussions along any of these lines.


Publications

Selected Publications

Beljaars, I. (2016) “Body Politics. The Social Production of Difference in the Dutch Kizomba Dance Scene. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, Maklu.

Beljaars, I. (2016) “Difference-Making in the Dutch Kizomba Scene” LOVA, the Netherlands Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology, 36: 26-37.


Awards

2016 Graduate Entrance Scholarship, UBC |2016 R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellowship |2016 International Tuition Award |2013 Field Research Stipend, Leiden University |2012 M.A. Tuition Award from “Besty Perk-Opleidingsfonds”, Tesselschade Arbeid-Adelt, the Netherlands


Additional Description

ubc.academia.edu/IneBeljaars



https://ubc.academia.edu/IneBeljaars















Ine Beljaars is PhD candidate at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Ine is a feminist, anti-racist cultural anthropologist interested in how power and ideology re/produce difference and inequality intersectionally along the lines of gender, race, class and sexuality within Western popular culture and the cultural industries. Interested in urban performance and the performative mechanisms in which they are embedded, Ine takes the micropolitics of the body and the bodily as points of departure to study the politics of difference. Her main field of inquiry includes Afro-diasporic dance and music cultures, including but not limited to salsa, kizomba, rap, hip-hop and jazz.


Ine Beljaars

Supervisor: Dr. Becki Ross / Dr. Annette Henry
Graduate Student Group
About keyboard_arrow_down

MA cum laude, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, the Netherlands (2014)
BA, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, the Netherlands (2012)

Biography

Drawing on the social sciences and the humanities, Ine’s interdisciplinary research interests are embedded within the anthropology of dance, performance studies, sociology, cultural studies, and feminist, postcolonial and race critical theory. Her research interests include gender, race, class, sexuality, the politics of difference, urban music and dance cultures, Western popular culture, and Western Europe, North-America and the Caribbean.

Ine’s interests in dance originates from her love for music (Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, pop and classical) which in turn sparked her academic interest in musical migration, and the ideologies and politics within and behind movement aesthetics. Within her cultural anthropology undergraduate studies, Ine specialized geographically in the Caribbean and studied the history of jazz alongside the curriculum. Her bachelor thesis studied the transnational flows of salsa through a case study of the Japanese salsa scene and the processes of sameness/difference within that scene. In her Master’s degree, Ine specialized in the M.A. track “Global Economy and Culture”, which studied cultural flows and unequal processes of globalization in-depth. Consequently, within her M.A. research, Ine studied the social production of difference within the kizomba scene in the Netherlands. A recipient of the Faculty of Arts Graduate Award at the University of British Columbia, a Webster Fellow at Green College, and runner-up for the LOVA/Marjan Rens Thesis Award in 2015 for best thesis in the Netherlands on gender and feminist anthropology, her book “Body Politics” is currently being used as course material within one of the first year anthropology courses at Leiden University.

Ine is fascinated by music and dance cultures as they constitute a major (and often neglected) part of social life where ideologies and power im/balances, values, norms and identities can be performed and played with, contested, magnified, solidified and/or reiterated.

Research keyboard_arrow_down

Research

Ine’s doctoral research builds upon her BA and MA research, and interrogates what it means that white Dutch increasingly turn to Afro-diasporic partner dances, such as salsa, kizomba, semba, and bachata for personal expression and identity negotiation. She thereby questions what the materialization of salsa and kizomba in the Netherlands means in terms of cultural (ex)change and appropriation, postcolonial race relations, modernity, the body, and cosmopolitanism. Dutch whiteness has a particular critical focus, especially the ways in which differing white notions of modernity and cosmopolitanism are worked through the body and the bodily. As such, this dissertation aims to contribute to and possibly intervene in contemporary debates in the anthropology of dance and performance studies, the sociology of race and critical whiteness studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.

Another topic of great interest for Ine includes the contemporary normalization of the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies, particularly of the “booty” body part as a recurring trope within contemporary Western popular culture, including in hip-hop, rap, and pop music videos and lyrics, social media and “twerkout” studios. Interested in why females are participating in these processes deliberately themselves, Ine seeks to understand how forms of self-objectification affects women and gender relations differently and aims to take stock of where we stand today in terms of gender equality, emancipation and liberation within Western popular culture, the music industry, and in society at large. She warmly welcomes discussions along any of these lines.

Publications keyboard_arrow_down

Selected Publications

Beljaars, I. (2016) “Body Politics. The Social Production of Difference in the Dutch Kizomba Dance Scene. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, Maklu.

Beljaars, I. (2016) “Difference-Making in the Dutch Kizomba Scene” LOVA, the Netherlands Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology, 36: 26-37.

Awards keyboard_arrow_down

2016 Graduate Entrance Scholarship, UBC |2016 R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellowship |2016 International Tuition Award |2013 Field Research Stipend, Leiden University |2012 M.A. Tuition Award from “Besty Perk-Opleidingsfonds”, Tesselschade Arbeid-Adelt, the Netherlands

Additional Description keyboard_arrow_down

ubc.academia.edu/IneBeljaars



https://ubc.academia.edu/IneBeljaars















Ine Beljaars is PhD candidate at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Ine is a feminist, anti-racist cultural anthropologist interested in how power and ideology re/produce difference and inequality intersectionally along the lines of gender, race, class and sexuality within Western popular culture and the cultural industries. Interested in urban performance and the performative mechanisms in which they are embedded, Ine takes the micropolitics of the body and the bodily as points of departure to study the politics of difference. Her main field of inquiry includes Afro-diasporic dance and music cultures, including but not limited to salsa, kizomba, rap, hip-hop and jazz.