“Projecting Knowledge: Visual Instruction” – Jamilla Notebaard

The subproject “Visual Instruction” is part of the broader “Projecting Knowledge” project. This subproject is centered around the question: How was the optical lantern used in academic teaching in the Netherlands between 1880 and 1940 and how did it affect pedagogical practices in different disciplines? The main sources within this research will be the surviving slide collection used within Dutch universities as well as the lecture notes of professors from different disciplines. The outcome of the project will be answering this research question through a series of in-depth analyses of surviving slides sets and lecture material preserved in Dutch university museums and collection, covering different disciplines. It will study the way in which the lantern’s affordances shaped the lecturing process and assess the impact of the magic lantern on teaching practice by contextualising its finding in relation to wider theoretical debates on visual instruction at that time. This project is a way to gain insight into the ways in which scientific knowledge was communicated for educational purposes by means of the magic lantern.

Jamilla Notebaard studied History at the University of Amsterdam, where she also finished my Research Master in History. During her Master, she did an internship at the Huygens Institute for Dutch history,  where she worked on the digitalization of the letters of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. As an historian, she have always been interested in the ways in which knowledge is ‘produced’ and transmitted, especially scientific knowledge.

This project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Frank Kessler.

For more information, you can visit the project’s website