Projects

Imelda Hoebes

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. 

This research project studies comparatively how social media-based public opinion manipulation is organised in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Computational propaganda – the coordinated dissemination of political disinformation by networks of hired social media influencers (‘cyber troops’) – constitutes a considerable and growing threat for the quality of public debate and, consequently, democracy around the world.

This PhD research traces the actions and ideas of Indonesian activists and their efforts to build transnational coalitions for peace from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

This project aims to understand the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday state-citizen interaction. To what extent is Indonesia’s democratic transition changing the way ordinary Indonesians relate to the state in terms of citizenship? How can we explain both the changes and the continuities?

What did enslaved people do to gain citizenship rights and what determined their success? By analyzing and linking different archival collections, this project investigates how people in Dutch colonies emancipated over several generations and developed an informal form of citizenship.

'Independence, decolonization, violence, and war in Indonesia, 1945-1950' was a joint research programme of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), the Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH) and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The research results were presented in February 2022.

This research offers an alternative perspective on the struggle for independence. This project focused on state-sanctioned vigilante violence as a key feature of Indonesian state formation. 

De leerstoel Democratische Vertegenwoordiging in het Koninkrijk richt zich op de politieke relaties tussen Europees Nederland en de zes Caribische eilanden in het Koninkrijk; de zogenaamde Koninkrijksrelaties.

This project engages in a first-ever study of general patterns and outcomes of oil palm conflicts across Indonesia. The aim is to provide input for legal reform and governance initiatives that will strengthen the capacity of rural communities to address grievances caused by oil palm expansion.

By innovatively integrating archaeology, ethnography, and heritage studies, this research centers on Haiti—the world’s first Black Republic—to highlight the importance of engaging historically marginalized communities in creating inclusive narratives of the past and heritage. 

Through an in-depth case study of how different groups in the Dutch metropole used law to address racial discrimination in the 1980s and 1990s, Alison Fischer explores how law has played a role in constructing racial identities in Dutch society 

For her PhD thesis, historian Katja Paijens is writing a political biography of Hamid Alkadrie, (1913-1978), Sultan of Pontianak. The aim of this study is to understand the significance of Sultan Hamid to Indonesia’s independence and state formation

This PhD research focuses on water governance and citizenship in Jakarta's urban poor coastal areas, examining the complex interactions between law, governance, and marginalized communities in rapidly urbanizing cities.

Why are small states significantly more stable than large ones, despite the weakness of political institutions and the prevalence of personalistic politics? Which factors contribute to the absence of major political crises and violence in small states? And who are the key actors involved in these processes?