Researcher (Research Meets Art in Residence - RAiR), KB National Library of the Netherlands
Miles Niemeijer is a music project and research coordinator at Podiumkunst.net, a consortium of heritage organisations working on performing arts heritage for the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. In 2025, he is Researcher-Artist-in-Residence at the KB, on behalf of the Dutch Jazz Archive.
His project Lost Sounds, Written Sources examines how written and digital documentation of underrepresented musical histories is organised, preserved and made accessible within national heritage infrastructures. While Dutch musical life is diverse and dynamic, genres such as hip hop, punk, electronic music, Indorock and diasporic music cultures remain unevenly represented in national collections.
The research focuses not on sound recordings themselves, but on writing about music: reviews, interviews, magazines, zines, blogs and scene-based platforms. These sources shape how music is interpreted, contextualised and remembered. The central question is how people-centred heritage practice can function as a methodological intervention to rebalance which music histories become visible and sustainable within institutional infrastructures
Within the KB Lab, Miles collaborates with Thunderboom Records and live coder and computational artist Timo Hoogland to develop an open-source tool that translates textual features and metadata into generative soundscapes and visual interfaces. This practice-based approach experiments with live data methods to make patterns of visibility and absence experientially perceptible, revealing how heritage systems operate as filters of cultural memory
In 2026, the project has been or will be presented in academic and professional contexts, including at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Rotterdam Popular Music Studies Conference) and at Middlesex University London (Popular Music Methodologies Conference), and discussed at a national study day organised by the Dutch Music Institute at the Central Library in The Hague on the future of Dutch music archives. These contexts situate the research within broader debates on popular music methodologies, music sociology and the sustainability of musical heritage.
Through collaborations with heritage professionals, artists and researchers, his work connects digital experimentation, archival practice and cultural policy to strengthen the visibility and continuity of underrepresented music histories.
