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Meet Our Fellows

Prof. Nataša VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK

Professor
Department of Asian Studies
University of Ljubljana (Ljubljana)

Fellowship Project

Prof. Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik spent 12 months (October 2013 – September 2014) studying the categorization, registration and digitalization of Chinese art objects at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. During her fellowship, she also visited other museums and exchanged with local experts.

Biography

Prof. Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik is Professor at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. She studied History, Art history and Sinology at the University of Ljubljana and obtained her PhD degree in 2006. Her research focuses on Chinese traditional and modern art, Chinese grave art, Chinese Buddhist art, material culture, collecting history and chinoiseries. Dr. Vampelj Suhadolnik is working on a project on categorization and digitalization of Chinese art collections in Slovenia. She is also the initiator, co-founder and first president of the European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology (EAAA), and an ASET Stiftung Senior Research Scholar (Berlin, Germany).

Recent Development and Achievement

    Prof. Vampelj Suhadolnik leads the research project “Orphaned Objects: Examining East Asian Objects outside Organised Collecting Practices in Slovenia (2021–2025)”, funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency. She also led the project “East Asian collections in Slovenia: inclusion of Slovenia in the global exchange of objects and ideas with East Asia (2018–2022).” The project team established a database of East Asian objects in Slovenia and was involved in several exhibitions, including an exhibition on Alma Karlin in 2019, an exhibition of East Asian objects from the Regional Museum Celje in 2021, an exhibition of confiscated East Asian objects in the Regional Museum Celje in 2023 and an exhibition of Slovenian sailors and the objects they brought back from East Asia in the Maritime Museum Piran. Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik is also a co-curator of the current exhibition “Asia in the Heart of Ljubljana: The Life of Skušek Collection” in the Slovene Ethnographic Museum (on view by December 2025). The team also published catalogues and books about collecting history of Chinese and other East Asian objects in Slovenia. 

    Prof. Vampelj Suhadolnik was also actively engaged in the PAGODE – Europeana China project PAGODE – Europeana China project co-financed by the European Union. The project is about the presentation and digitalization of the preserved Chinese cultural heritage in Europe, with a focus on its availability and access through the Europeana Digital Library European digital library. 

Selected Publication(s)

  • Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. (2025). Why East Asian objects in Slovenia became “orphaned”: four “orphaning” processes. Asian Studies, vol. 13 (29), issue 1: 15–43.  
  • Nickel, Lukas and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik (eds). (2024). East Asian art in the wake of the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873. Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana Press. 
  • Trnovec, Barbara and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik. (2024). Eleonore Haas: the lost Chinese heritage in Mozirje. In East Asian art in the wake of the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873, edited by Lukas Nickel and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, 239–279. Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana Press. 
  • Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša (ed.) (2023). Centring the periphery: new perspective on collecting East Asian objects. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 
  • Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. (2023). Skušek’s discovery of Chinese furniture’s sophisticated lines: the collecting of Chinese furniture and the issue of its categorization. In Centring the periphery: new perspective on collecting East Asian objects, edited by Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, 82–109. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 
  • Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. (2021). Between ethnology and cultural history: where to place East Asian objects in Slovenian museums? Asian Studies, 9 (25), issues 3: 85–116. Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. (2020). Collecting Chinese objects in Slovenia at the turn of the twentieth century. Ming Qing Yanjiu, 24(2), 161–180. 
  • Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. (2019). Death in Beijing: Alma M. Karlins description of Chinese funerary rituals and mourning practices. Poligrafi: revija za religiologijo, mitologijo in filozofijo, 24(93-94), 49-75
  • Rosker, J. S., & Vampelj Suhadolnik, N. (2011). The yields of transition: literature, art and philosophy in early medieval china. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
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