KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

Events archive
Seminar image
19

JUNE

SEA seminar | An algorithmic visuality of Muslim women images | Nurul Huda Rashid

19 June 2025 

From the Women of Algiers (1834) painting, postcards of the odalisque, to the photograph of the Afghan Girl (1984), representations of Muslim women have been pervasively captured in various image forms across time. Plotted across the 19th to 21st centuries, different technologies have contributed to the exponential reproduction and circulation of Muslim women images, evoking a visuality that highlights intersections of technology, ideology, and geography. In the data turn, a new algorithmic visuality is introduced, yielding new formulations to old paradigms.

Station Tegal
27

May

SEA seminar | Ghost from the past: The Grondkaart and politics of transforming railway land assets in Indonesia | Dianto Bachriadi

27 May 2025 

The Grondkaart is a map indicating land ownership and control boundaries, created by the Dutch East Indies government. It is currently used in Indonesia to demonstrate land control by the state-owned railway company (PT KAI). The Grondkaart is a piece of paper that should serve only as an archive and artefact of the past, having no legal power in post-colonial Indonesia. 

Photo for UUKS25
22

May

UUKS seminar | Between legitimacy and science: A revolution of the Javanese cropping calendar in colonial Indonesia | Adrian Perkasa

22 May 2025 

Pranata mangsa has been recognized as a Javanese agricultural calendar that dates to ancient times. While recent studies have presented pranata mangsa as one of the key elements of Javanese traditional ecological knowledge in agriculture; historical documents show Dutch influence of the calendar’s evolution back to the nineteenth century.

Church 1
1

May

SEA seminar | The transnational work of Indonesian Catholic missionaries in the Netherlands | Fransiska Widyawati

1 May 2025

In recent decades, the declining authority of the Church in Europe has significantly weakened the vitality of Catholic orders in the Netherlands, raising questions about their sustainability amid shifting cultural and religious landscapes. To counteract this trend, many orders have invited foreign missionaries from Asia and Africa to rejuvenate their missions.

The Politics of Coercion
4

MARCH

Book presentation | The politics of coercion: State and regime making in Cambodia | Neil Loughlin

4 March 2025

In The politics of coercion, Neil Loughlin explains the persistence of Cambodia's authoritarian regime for more than four decades.  The book provides a historically grounded investigation of the country's ruling coalition: political elites, many drawn from within the state's coercive apparatus, who, in coordination with state-dependent tycoons, have come to control Cambodia's politics and its economy. Loughlin presents new empirical data foregrounding the coercive underpinnings of the modern Cambodian state and its party, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP).

Book front cover hi res 1366x2048
28

FEB

Caribbean seminar | Confronting climate coloniality: Decolonizing pathways for climate justice | Farhana Sultana

28 February 2025

Confronting Climate Coloniality exposes how legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism co-produce and exacerbate the climate crisis, create disproportionate impacts on those who contributed the least to climate change, and influence global and local responses. Climate coloniality is perpetuated through processes of neoliberalism, racial capitalism, development interventions, economic growth models, media, and education.

Colonial Debris Film Screening   revised (2) 800
26

FEB

Colonial Debris | Documentary & debate about palm oil and land conflicts in Indonesia (3)

26 February

This event will mark the launch of the English version of the documentary Colonial Debris. In this documentary Indonesian filmmakers explore why their country has so many land conflicts. As they film the protests of communities against palm oil companies and real estate developers taking their land, they find that the roots of these conflicts go back to Indonesia’s colonial past.

Colonial Debris Film Screening   revised (2) 800
25

FEB

Colonial Debris | Documentary & debate about palm oil and land conflicts in Indonesia (2)

25 February

This event will mark the launch of the English version of the documentary Colonial Debris. In this documentary Indonesian filmmakers explore why their country has so many land conflicts. As they film the protests of communities against palm oil companies and real estate developers taking their land, they find that the roots of these conflicts go back to Indonesia’s colonial past.

Colonial Debris Film Screening   revised (2) 800
24

FEB

Colonial Debris | Documentary & debate about palm oil and land conflicts in Indonesia (1)

24 February

This event will mark the launch of the English version of the documentary Colonial Debris. In this documentary Indonesian filmmakers explore why their country has so many land conflicts. As they film the protests of communities against palm oil companies and real estate developers taking their land, they find that the roots of these conflicts go back to Indonesia’s colonial past.

Practitioners of Haitian Vodou at Société Linto Roi in Miami. R. Freeman
6

FEB

Seminar | The songs and prayers of Sèvis Ginen: Historical linguistic approaches to Haitian Vodou | Benjamin Hebblethwaite

6 February 2025

Songs and prayers are the basis of oral and printed sacred literature in the African diaspora religion of Sèvis Ginen (African Service), one of Haiti’s best documented traditions of Vodou. The songs and prayers of Vodou are among the oldest known Kreyòl language documents given their multiple entry points into an encyclopedic and millennium-spanning record of Atlantic history and language.

1
2

Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies