Highlighting our collections for Women’s History Month
Every year in March, Women’s History Month marks an occasion to celebrate and highlight the contributions of women throughout history. A large number of the EAC collections have been donated by women. These contributions play an important role in preserving the stories within our archive.
This year, we ran a month-long initiative on our social media channels - each Wednesday in March, we highlighted one collection donated by a woman and took a closer look at the personal story behind it. In this article we will share a summary of those four posts.
Week 1
This collection was donated to us by former EAC archivist Rosita Arnts-Boer and consists of diaries, photographs, and letters exchanged between family members and friends. These written and visual records reflect the period from 1981 to 2009, during which she and her family moved between different countries across the world.
Rosita began her career in the navy and later continued her professional path at IBM, where she became the first female firefighter in the company’s fire department.
As the archivist at the EAC, she strongly supported and advocated for our mission to document the social history of expatriate life.
Week 2
The EAC preserves several collections donated by women who spent much of their childhoods overseas, in what was known as the Dutch East Indies, and which now includes parts of Indonesia and Malaysia.
Like thousands of other civilians in the region, as children, they were sent to internment camps with their mothers and siblings after the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies during the Second World War.
Daily life was marked by fear, strict control, and a lack of food and clean water. Children were separated by age and discouraged from speaking to siblings, while punishments at school were common.
These memories reflect many sad moments; however, they also reveal the strength, resilience, and courage that these women needed to endure life in the camp and later begin a new chapter in their lives after returning to the Netherlands.
Week 3
This collection was donated to us by Sarah Bringhurst Familia and documents Sarah and her family’s lives between 1998 and 2003. Here, we focus on Sarah’s time as a university student, in particular her study abroad experience in Syria and travels in 2001. It reflects the period during which she lived in Damascus and travelled to Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, and Lebanon as part of her academic program.
While in Syria, Sarah attended classes at Damascus University and wrote regularly to her family about language study, cultural differences, religious observations, political tensions, and homesickness. Her travels gave her firsthand insight into Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures.
Week 4
To close this series, we have chosen to highlight not a specific collection, but the reason these collections are preserved at our archive - thanks to three women who dedicated their work and knowledge to creating a home for expatriate life stories.
The journey of the Expatriate Archive Centre (EAC) began with a simple but powerful recognition: the everyday stories of people living abroad were rarely acknowledged or preserved. In 1992, a group of expatriate families decided to document and share their experiences - from farewells and cultural adjustments to balancing careers and family life across borders. Hundreds of handwritten stories were collected and later published in two anthologies “Life on the Move” and “Life Now”.
By 2001, these contributions had been carefully organised, yet their future remained uncertain. Recognising their value as unique primary source material, three women - Judy Moody-Stuart, Glenda Lewin, and Dewey White - took the initiative to preserve them. Inspired by the richness and honesty of these writings, they founded the Outpost Family Archive Centre in The Hague in 2003.
They envisioned the archive as a space that would move beyond romanticised images of expatriate life and instead document its realities: the challenges, the resilience, and the search for belonging. In 2008, the EAC became an independent foundation and has since continued its mission to preserve the life stories of expatriates and their families for academic research.