Dr Roeland Paardekooper

As one of the founders of EXARC in 2001, the network remains a source of inspiration and welcome international experience besides my other activities. In 2004, I took up a position at the Eindhoven Open-Air Museum in the Netherlands, where I grew up, becoming its first archaeologist. In 2006, I moved on to coordinate the European cooperation project liveARCH. The six archaeological open-air museums participating in the project became case studies for my PhD research at the University of Exeter, UK. Following this success, I initiated and co-authored several further European cooperation projects, all aimed at the professionalisation of museums. I worked on these as a project manager and, occasionally, as social media coordinator. Between 2013 and 2016, I put my ideas on managing and developing an archaeological open-air museum into practice at the Open-Air Museum in Oerlinghausen, Germany, where I served as (interim) director. From 2021 to 2023, I served as director of the Middelaldercentret in Denmark, navigating the challenges of the post-pandemic period and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In 2024, I took the lead of a major project in Gotha, Germany, aimed at transforming the museum into a digitally competent cultural institution and opening its collections to the digital world. A key element has been establishing structured cooperation with Wikipedians in Germany and beyond.