Area Studies is shooting itself in the foot with its singular focus on dissertations. To be clear: during my PhD trajectory I had two wonderful supervisors, whose kindness, erudition and inquisitiveness were ...
I love election day in Indonesia. Particularly the moment the votes are counted. This is the moment when Indonesia’s democracy is at its most likable. Yes, I can worry about the role of money in the elections, the dominance of economic elites...
Blog by Ward Berenschot on newmandala.org. Indonesia’s home affairs minister, Tjahjo Kumolo, made quite some headlines last month when he suggested that Indonesia’s civil servants could “socialise” ...
Who is Panji, and what exactly is a Panji tale? Recently, on 21 September 2018, a special symposium was organised by the Leiden University Library and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) ...
Recently an Indonesian colleague asked me to write a reflection on my fieldwork experiences studying politics in India and Indonesia, for an Indonesian book on ethnographic fieldwork. Here is the English version. Doing research in the field can be tough....
Big conferences are crucial when it comes to meeting the celebrities in your field, and perhaps even striking up short conversations with them. And yet the cultural dynamics of these sites of gathering ...
On 8 and 9 October 2018, the KITLV organized a workshop on the subject of Academic research in a decolonizing world: Towards new ways of thinking and...
Seven years after South Sudan’s attainment of independence, the world may this week once again witness the birth of a new sovereign state. Next Sunday (4 November), citizens of the South...
Laments about “transactional politics” (politik transaktional) are a regular feature of discussions about Indonesian politics. Voters, as well as a few politicians, can be frequently heard complaining about how ...
The most interesting things are often found in places least expected to harbour them. Some 40 kilometres south of Cape Town, surrounded by grass-covered hills and sandy beaches populated by penguins, lies an oasis of South Africa’s...