Thursday 24 September

THE FILM WILL NOT BE SCREENED ONLINE, ONLY ONSITE. ONLINE PARTICIPANTS CAN JOIN THE Q&A FROM 16.15 PM.

During this seminar session, film scholar-practitioner Emiel Martens, who was affiliated with KITLV from 2013-2015, will screen his new documentary Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline (34 minutes). The film, much talked about in Jamaica and beyond, is one of the outcomes of his year-long Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, from which he has recently returned. Martens will discuss the film in relation to his work in postcolonial film and tourism studies, Caribbean film and tourism studies, film-based research, participatory storytelling, and activist filmmaking. He will also situate the film within the work of the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JaBBEM) and recent Grammy-winning Jamaican reggae artist Keznamdi, in collaboration with whom the documentary was made.

Friday 18 September

Join us for the launch of the research project Mazu, Hantu, and Kue in Makassar! How has the Chinese community in Makassar turned experiences of uncertainty, vulnerability, and displacement into heritage? This new international collaborative project explores Makassar’s Chinese diaspora from the VOC era to the present, examining how religion, storytelling, and food have helped them navigate colonial rule, racial classification, and social change.

Temples dedicated to Mazu (媽祖), Guanyin (觀音), and Guan Gong (關公) were not only places of worship, but also spaces of mutual aid, social organization, and community life. Ghost stories (cerita hantu) connected to Chinese cemeteries carried memories of violence, displacement, and unresolved histories, while kue (粿) and other ritual and festive foods brought Chinese, Makassarese, and Malay traditions together.

By tracing these practices across Makassar and the Hokkien maritime world, the project asks how experiences of fear and marginality can become creativity, belonging, and shared heritage. The launch introduces the project’s research framework and plans while opening a conversation with community members about the histories, memories, traditions, and lived experiences that continue to shape Makassar’s Chinese heritage. It also marks the beginning of a longer-term dialogue between researchers and communities, with the aim of making research accessible as open educational resources and creating opportunities for future collaboration.

Wednesday 16 September

This study presentation examines the Indigenous Papuan struggle following Indonesia's state dispossessions. The Indigenous movement to repossess land has led to institutional and cultural fragmentation. Land repossession has fueled inter-clan litigation, state-court battles, and "jual di atas jual" (selling on top of selling)—a pattern in which overlapping customary titles are repeatedly resold to multiple buyers. Additionally, customary inheritance rules marginalize Indigenous women by restricting their land rights.

Thursday 9 July 2026

How can music serve as an archive? The Frequency of Freedom brings together South African cultural practitioners and Dutch-based youth to explore Cape slave memorial traditions through the Nederlandse liedjies repertoire and the Tweede Nuwe Jaar parade. 

Tuesday 14 July 2026

This talk examines the work of building contractors—referred to as aannemers/anémers—in Indonesia from the early to mid-twentieth century. It focuses on Bandung-based family entrepreneurs of ethnic Chinese Sundanese descent who worked with Dutch architects and plantation interests during the late Dutch colonial period, and later with Indonesian engineers in the early Indonesia's post-Independence era. 

16 July 2026

In Indonesian-controlled West Papua, the National Strategic Projects for food and energy estates—framed by the Indonesian state as strategies for climate mitigation and national food self-sufficiency—have instead reinforced colonial practices through land dispossession, ecological degradation, settler and military occupation, and direct and indirect rule over Indigenous peoples and their territories.

Thursday 2 July 2026

This summer, Professor Rosemarijn Hoefte will retire as senior researcher and member of the management team at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), and as professor in the history of Suriname after 1873 in comparative perspective at the University of Amsterdam. Throughout her academic career, Rosemarijn has made an invaluable contribution to the field of Caribbean Studies: as a researcher, institute manager, editor-in-chief of the New West Indian Guide, and President of the Association of Caribbean Historians.

Vrijdag 26 juni 2026

In 2026 viert het KITLV haar 175-jarig bestaan. We vieren en reflecteren op de afgelopen kwart eeuw met een Publieksfestival op 26 juni 2026.

Wednesday 17 June 2026

How have the Javanese, in the course of history, engaged with their own past? What kinds of past were important to specific communities, and how did they go about retrieving and recording it? And what can these processes tell us about the relationship between these historical imaginations on the one hand and understandings of temporality, textuality, and metaphysics on the other? 

Thursday 11 June 2026

Why do infrastructure projects in Indonesia end up stalled and abandoned (mangkrak)? 

Tuesday 9 June 2026

What's the epistemic force of literature? How can fiction articulate a feminist decolonial perspective?

Thursday 4 June 2026

From Haiti as the starting point, this presentation examines the varied manifestations of fossil fuels, as plastic, petrol or toxic fumes, to conceptualize the unequal duress of Caribbean fossil modernity.

Tuesday 2 June 2026

How do food practices evolve after migration? To what extent do metaphors like “salad bowl” and “melting pot” accurately reflect the complex nature of diasporic culinary changes in multicultural environments?

Thursday 28 May 2026

Is social media driving a trend towards authoritarianism in Southeast Asia? How are influence operations on social media organised, and what can civil society to do resist such campaigns? This panel brings together three scholars to discuss the deepening entanglement between social media platforms and authoritarian consolidation across Southeast Asia.

Donderdag 21 mei 2026

Het bestuur van de Vereniging KITLV nodigt haar leden uit voor de Algemene Ledenvergadering 2026 op donderdag 21 mei a.s. met aansluitend een borrel.

Thursday 7 May 2026

This talk discusses how the Korean Wave (Hallyu) has actively introduced the Korean language into Indonesia’s sociolinguistic landscape. Combining social media analysis and linguistic landscape data, it shows how Korean has become embedded in everyday communication and urban visibility.

Thursday 23 April

Some of the worst natural disasters in world history have happened in Indonesia: the 1257 Samalas eruption, the 1815 Tambora eruption, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Despite their global impact, these catastrophes do not always appear in the traditional historiographies of the archipelago. 

Thursday 9 April 2026

The talk discusses the emergence of New Order resource management in the late 1960s and 1970s within the context of American imperialism.

Tuesday 7 April 2026

The documentary Amplop Demokrasi (Democracy of Envelopes) follows the political cost of local elections (Pilkada) in Indonesia in 2024, from campaign spending and oligarchic influence to the broader consequences for corruption and environmental decision-making.

Thursday 2 April 2026

Throughout colonial Indonesia, a common method to determine a boy’s taxable age was to loop a rope around the chest. If the boy’s head fitted through, his chest was still too small and he was too young; if not, he owed the government tax. 

Thursday 26 March 2026

A conversational seminar where three artists with three projects share their work with us on unravelling knowledge beyond text through visual, sonic, and sensorial experiences.  

Tuesday 31 March 2026

Film director Yonri Revolt will join us for a film seminar, with a screening of scenes of the film Muman Minggil (The road to ancestor land - Jayapura, Papua, 2023, 150’), which Revolt made together with Mahardika Yudha. This unique documentary focuses on the work of anthropologist Arnold Ap, the museum where he worked and the music group Mambesak in Papua.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

This paper re-examines the American naval interventions in 1830's Aceh. It argues that the American purchasers of Acehnese pepper also sold substantial amounts of opium. 

Wednesday 11 March 2026

The TASTE project warmly invites colleagues and friends to join us for an iftar gathering. Boeka (Cape Malay) and buka puasa (Malay/Indonesian/ Sri Lankan Malay) both signify the act of breaking the fast. Across the Indian Ocean world, this moment brings together food and forms of communal belonging.