About us

SharedCemeteries.net is a bilingual portal about funerary heritage in former Dutch colonies, posts and fortifications worldwide. The portal was developed by the Dutch Dodenakkers.nl foundation with support from the Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds. Dodenakkers.nl was founded in 2001 and is a knowledge centre for Dutch funerary heritage, both in the Netherlands and abroad. Members range from heritage professionals specialized in funerary heritage to dedicated volunteers with broad expertise. The foundation manages an extensive website with more than 800 articles on Dutch funerary heritage.

Dodenakkers.nl is a partner of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands when it comes to funerary heritage within the Programme International Heritage Cooperation (formerly Shared Cultural Heritage). In recent years, the foundation has been involved in advising on (former) Dutch cemeteries in Suriname, Japan, Indonesia and India, among others. Dodenakkers.nl has also advised on Dutch cemeteries in Italy, Turkey and South Africa. 

With the portal SharedCemeteries.net, the foundation wants to map the shared funerary heritage abroad, give researchers and stakeholders the opportunity to share knowledge and also to present it to a wide audience.

SharedCemeteries.net is "work in progress" and in December 2020 a start was made with mapping Suriname in collaboration with the Suriname Built Heritage Foundation. In addition, Japan has been made available. Information on India and the Caribbean will follow in the spring of 2021. Funerary heritage in more than 20 other countries will be added later in 2021.

In addition to overviews and articles per country or region, the website offers various glossaries, a clickable world map and an image bank. The foundation also wants to provide supporting documentation with regard to management and preservation.

SharedCemeteries.net cordially invites researchers, historians, stakeholders and interested parties to work together to map out this special kind of shared heritage.

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