175 Jaar KITLV Festival
On June 26, KITLV celebrates its 175th anniversary with a public festival. The program includes space for debates and reflection on the past 25 years, and features art, food, dance, documentaries, and spoken word.
Latest news
Launch | The price of power: Campaign finance and vote buying in Indonesia’s 2024 elections
12-06-2026
How much does it cost to win an election in Indonesia and who pays the price? A new report from UGM (PolGov) and KITLV, supported by LP3ES, offers the first comprehensive, data-driven answer. The study finds that winning district-head candidates spent an average of 36.8 billion rupiah (USD 2.1 million).
Media | Esther Captain over witte meetlat en verdeling gelden onderzoek naar slavernijverleden
10-06-2026
Opinie: 'Wie hanteert er nu een witte meetlat in onderzoek naar het slavernijverleden?' Onderzoekers Esther Captain (KITLV) en Alana Helberg-Proctor (UvA) reageren in een opiniestuk in de Volksrant van 19 mei jl. op de stelling dat de verdeling van gelden uit het slavernijfonds zou leiden tot ‘epistemische bezetting’.
Werkbezoek | Koningin Máxima bezoekt 175-jarig KITLV
05-06-2026
Op 26 mei jl. bracht Koningin Máxima, beschermvrouwe van het KITLV, een werkbezoek aan het instituut, dat dit jaar haar 175-jarig bestaan viert. Bij aankomst werd zij onder meer ontvangen door KITLV-directeur Diana Suhardiman, de voorzitter van de Vereniging KITLV Alicia Schrikker, en Geert de Snoo, directeur Onderzoeksbeleid van de KNAW.
Events
17 June
SEA seminar | Temporalities of memory: Religion, history, and the unstable past in Java | Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan & Verena Meyer
26 June
Festival | 175 Jaar KITLV
2 July
Symposium | Caribbean studies: Past, present, and future of the field
Latest calls
Funds
The Vereniging KITLV invites members to submit applications to its funds.
Deadline: 15 September
Who we are & what we do
The KITLV is a research institute dedicated to the study of societal challenges, focusing on the histories and afterlives of colonialism in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and the Netherlands. Our aim is to produce quality research that furthers justice and envisions alternative futures beyond dominant perspectives.
Our research is informed by intimate familiarity with the cultures, histories, and languages of the places we study. Combining history, anthropology, archaeology, political science, linguistics, and the arts, our interdisciplinary perspective is critical and sensitive to marginalised voices.
Research Lines
Project
Cyber troops and computational propaganda in Southeast Asia: A comparative study of public opinion manipulation
Expensive elections campaigns are a threat to democracies around the world, because they generate corruption and political inequality. Yet, due to methodological obstacles and a western bias in the current literature, we do not really know what makes election campaigns expensive.
Project
From nomadic nets to fixed shores: Navigating resource access and traditional ecological knowledge in post-sedentary Sea Nomads
The islands and coastlines of Southeast Asia are home to Sea Nomads, including Moken/Moklen, Orang Laut, and Sama-Bajau, each with their own distinct yet related cultural identities, languages, and histories. For centuries, these groups have maintained a close relationship with the ocean, often living nomadic or semi-nomadic lives where their houseboat served as both homes and the primary means of sustenance.
Project
International knowledge cooperation History of Slavery, Indonesia, Suriname & South Africa
The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) has been commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science to advance international knowledge cooperation regarding the history of slavery in Indonesia, South Africa, and Suriname.
Project
Island(er)s at the Helm: Co-creating sustainable and inclusive solutions for social adaptation to climate challenges in the (Dutch) Caribbean
Driven by the increasing public awareness of the impact of hurricanes and the devastation of coastal areas, Island(er)s at the Helm contributes to equipping (Dutch) Caribbean societies with proficient tools for confronting these challenging climatic phenomena.
Project
TRACE: Tracing evolutionary pathways in grassroots climate governance
Climate change demands urgent action, yet global climate governance is at an impasse, unable to inclusive, just, and nested adaptive strategies. TRACE pusher for a paradigm shift in climate governance. It aims to amplify grassroots forces and spearheading systematic transformations, focusing on Southeast.
Project
Trajectories of TASTE: An analytical framework of culinary change after migration
The TASTE Project, funded by the European Research Council and running from June 2024 to the summer of 2029, examines shifting food preferences and culinary change. Centered on three Indonesian diasporas, the project explores how people have adapted their culinary traditions to new environments in the past and continue to reshape them today. In doing so, we scrutinize how cultural, historical, social, economic, and environmental factors operate, intersect, and occasionally conflict in these transformations.
Project
Unpacking KITLV Special Collections: Colonial histories, object biographies, knowledge practices, and local agency
A project on the coloniality of Asian library and manuscript-formations. With KITLV Special Collections as point of departure, we study the social biographies of manuscripts, and the colonial histories of collecting, to gain insight into the role of violence therein, and to recognize local agency in the makings of so-called Asian Libraries.
Our work
Ward Berenschot
Our publications
Rightless resistance: Postcolonial citizenship, palm oil, and land grabs in Indonesia
Rightless resistance investigates why resistance to land grabbing so often fails. The rapid expansion of oil palm plantations has triggered widespread conflict across rural Indonesia as communities lose their land with little compensation. Based on an unprecedented study of 150 such conflicts, this book uncovers how villagers fight back against palm oil companies, and what their struggles reveal about power, law, and citizenship in postcolonial Indonesia.
Bretton T. Alvaré
KITLV Journals
Memory, identity, and insurgency: Lessons from the genesis of the National United Freedom Fighters (NUFF) in Trinidad and Tobago
New advanced article in the New West Indian Guide (NWIG) titled 'Memory, identity, and insurgency: Lessons from the genesis of the National United Freedom Fighters (NUFF) in Trinidad and Tobago'.
Wengki Ariando
Our publications
Knowledge and rights in transition: Post-sedentarized Orang Suku Laut in accessing resources in the Anthropocene
This chapter is part of the book Human rights and the environment: A Southeast Asian perspective and studies the problems faced by the Orang Suku Laut community that had to change their way of life.
Karwan Fatah-Black et al.
Our publications
Alkmaar en het slavernijverleden
De verwevenheid tussen de stad Alkmaar, de omliggende dorpen en het koloniale slavernijverleden bleef lang verborgen. Dit boek onthult, in opdracht van de gemeente Alkmaar en ondersteund door het Regionaal Archief Alkmaar, deze nog onbekende kant van de geschiedenis.
Hatib Kadir
Our publications
Multispecies colonialism: The politics of potential in the making of settler ecologies
This article examines how the idea of “finding potential” has structured colonial and postcolonial interventions in Papua’s wetlands. Tracing its genealogy from Dutch colonial science to Indonesian state-led development, it argues that potentiality operates as both an epistemic framework and a political tool that renders wetlands as idle and exploitable.
KITLV / BRILL
KITLV Journals
New West Indian Guide (NWIG)
The latest issue of the NWIG (volume 100: issue 1-2) is now available, with articles on the Caribbean in the fields of humanities, social & political science, archaeology, economics, geography and geology.