Esther Helena Arens is historian and works on colonization/decolonization, knowledge production, and material culture, especially in places and spaces between the Netherlands and Indonesia. She is associate of the DFG-funded project “Circulation in Spaces of Knowledge Between Asia and Europe: G.E. Rumphius and his Texts, circa 1670–1755“ at the Institute of Dutch Language and Literature, University of Cologne. Her current research project is focused on the cultural biography of Rumphius’ Ambonese Herbal from the 17th to the 21th century, accompanied by the blog “Botanical Letters. About Plants, Material Culture, and Colonialism“.Her open access papers include The Amboinsch Kruid-boek as Matter of Ecocriticism in the Journal of Dutch Literature 8 (2017) and From Rumpf to Rumphius: Actualisations of a Pre-Linnean Hero in Botany and Zoology in the e-journal helden.heroes. héros. Special Issue „Heroes and Heroization in Science, Scholarship and Knowledge-Production“ 4 (2018). As member of the Werkgroep Duits-Nederlandse geschiedenis she is engaged in interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to public and urban histories of Germany and the Netherlands in the 20th century.