The NIAS-NIOD-KITLV Fellowship Moving Objects, Mobilising Culture enables researchers and heritage practitioners from formerly colonised countries to access and conduct research on (collections of) objects – whether defined as cultural, historical, ancestral, art or otherwise – which are currently (lost) in the Netherlands, as well as on related archives and documentation. 

The fellows are invited to actively use, reflect on and engage with these collections, but are also encouraged to explore and (re-)establish connections with related communities, collections and sites in the country of origin or other countries. Fellows are encouraged to follow queries regarding the social histories and valuation of objects, in relation to or beyond questions of restitution, and to seek for the signification of objects and their trajectories in space and time, beyond the framings of heritage institutions or national histories.

In this seminar the NIAS–NIOD–KITLV Fellows of 2025-2026, Panggah Ardiyansyah, Leandro Mathews Cascon & Ganga Dissanayaka, will give short presentations on the topic of their research.

Program

15.00-15.05 PM: Welcome & introduction by Marieke Bloembergen (KITLV / Leiden University)

15.05-15.20 PM: Presentation Sendang Duwur, the unmaking of heritage, Panggah Ardiyansyah (University of Sheffield)

15.20-15.35 PM: Presentation Cultivating objects: Connecting Indigenous cassava agriculture of Suriname to its materialities through a study of colonial collections in the Netherlands, Leandro Mathews Cascon (University of Bonn)

15.35-15.50 PM: Presentation Between tradition and collection: The Kandy ring and the transformation of artisanal knowledge, Ganga Dissanayaka 

15.50-16.30 PM: Q & A

Presentations

Sendang Duwur, the unmaking of heritage
Built in the 16th century, Sendang Duwur is among the oldest Islamic sites in the Indonesian archipelago, yet it remains marginal within Indonesia’s heritage discourse. This presentation traces the trajectories of a hagiographic manuscript about Sunan Sendang alongside a wooden lion statue originally from his tomb house to deconstruct how knowledge about the site has been produced through (post)colonial philological and archaeological interventions. It examines when certain objects were deemed significant enough to be collected (and when they were not), how knowledge of Islamic archaeology has been shaped by the presence or absence of such collections, and how shifting regimes of value have been assigned to these objects over time. The study highlight the current practice whereby the biographies of manuscripts and artefacts in Indonesia have rarely been examined together, a gap rooted in colonial disciplinary divides between archaeology and philology. This separation has fragmented understandings of sites like Sendang Duwur and contributed to processes of heritage unmaking, where specific histories, objects, and meanings are rendered invisible or excluded

Panggah Ardiyansyah is a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield. He thinks about decoloniality and knowledge production through the field of Southeast Asian art history and archeology, with a sustained interest on/through the frameworks of restitution. His forthcoming publication explores the concept of keramat as a viable lens to decolonise the archaeology of Indonesia.

Cultivating objects: Connecting Indigenous cassava agriculture of Suriname to its materialities through a study of colonial collections in the Netherlands
How can the material culture related to the consumption of a plant tell us about Indigenous livelihood practices, changes under colonial regimes, and the construction of images of native populations in the eyes of a Metropolis? These are questions which I am currently exploring under the NIAS–NIOD–KITLV Fellowship. Through the analysis of cassava-related artifacts from Suriname housed at the Wereldmuseum (the Netherlands), as well as of document and image databases, I intend to discuss the stark contrast between traditional Indigenous perspectives on plant cultivation—deeply shaped by affective relationships, reciprocity, and familiarity—and the Dutch colonial view, which treated agriculture as an instrument of economic gain and market-driven production, and how can biocultural collections demonstrate such changes. Likewise, my research deals with how the transformation of indigenous artifacts and cassava plant samples into ethnographic and natural history museum objects had an effective role in serving the interests of the Dutch metropolis, erasing individual and collective histories and replacing these with representations which aimed at justifying the unjustifiable physical and cultural violence directed towards these populations.

Leandro Matthews Cascon is Brazilian archaeologist with twenty years of experience researching the Amazon forest, with a focus on the roles of plant use in the Amazonian past and present. Since 2018 he has dedicated himself to the study of Amazonian indigenous material culture in European museums, approaching ethnographic collections both as materialized indigenous knowledge of the deep and recent past, as well as sources on collecting practices and the colonial contexts in which these were undertaken. His work aims to increase access of indigenous peoples to their ancestral collections, and he believes that approaches which help to empower native stakeholders are not only morally correct, but in fact produce better science.

Between tradition and collection: The Kandy ring and the transformation of artisanal knowledge
This presentation will analyze the case of the Kandy Ring in the Rijksmuseum collection through the lens of interrelated studies of provenance, craftsmanship, memory, and iconography. The history of the gold ring's provenance can be traced from the traditional goldworking techniques of Sri Lankan craftsmen to its entry into the colonial European collection. Using traditional knowledge systems and texts that were the basis for the craftsmanship of the gold object, the presentation will seek to understand how traditional knowledge systems were recontextualized due to the influence of colonialism.

In the context of the broader cultural discourse related to material culture studies and the agency of art in the encounters between cultures during the colonial period, this presentation demonstrates how the Kandy Ring represents the complex interplay between the configurations of power, oral culture traditions, and their representation. Iconographic studies identify the specific influences of the power structures and symbols expressed in the local traditions and how these were reinscribed in the context of the cross-cultural encounter during the seventeenth century. In this presentation, the Kandy Ring will be repositioned not only as a decorative object but as a cultural document that records the transformation of traditional knowledge in the colonial context.

Ganga Rajinee Dissanayaka, is an ethnographer and art historian specializing in material culture, critical museum studies, and the provenance of Sri Lankan objects in European collections. Her research focuses on seventeenth-century art and architecture, examining how traditional knowledge systems were transformed through colonial encounters. A documentary filmmaker and author, she writes extensively on temple heritage and social history.Ganga serves on PPROCE-Netherlands and NWO committees, contributing to debates on repatriation and decolonization in museum practice.

Format, date, time & venue

This seminar is a hybrid event and will be held in the conference room of KITLV, Herta Mohr building, room 1.30, Witte Singel 27 A, Leiden and online via Zoom, on Tuesday 18 November from 15.00 – 16.30 PM (CET).