A Kross Valika Smeulders

Valika Smeulders is a historian and heritage specialist. She was born on Curaçao and went to school in the Netherlands, Suriname and Curaçao. She studied Latin American Languages and Cultures in Leiden and in 2012 earned her doctorate at Erasmus University with Slavernij in perspectief, on how the history of slavery is told in Suriname, Ghana, South Africa and Curaçao.

From 2011 to 2020 she ran her own research firm on the colonial past, Pasado Presente. In 2017 she joined the Rijksmuseum as a curator, and on 1 July 2020 she became its Head of History. She was one of the four curators of the exhibition Slavery (2021), which told ten personal stories and was opened by King Willem-Alexander. Singer Izaline Calister, a guest on A Kross …, also took part in the opening. A version of the exhibition was shown at United Nations headquarters in New York in 2023.

Since 1 October 2024 she has also been endowed professor of Museums, Heritage and Religion at the University of Groningen, a chair shared by the university and the Rijksmuseum. She publishes on the heritage of Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire. In 2013 she received the Solo di Korsou from the Prime Minister of Curaçao for her work for the Curaçao community in the Netherlands.