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. 

6 maart 2026

In zijn in 1946 verschenen boek Dalem tawanan Djepang [In Japanse gevangenschap] beschrijft journalist en schrijver Nio Joe Lan gedetailleerd zijn internering gedurende vrijwel de gehele Japanse bezettingsperiode. Hij brengt deze jaren door met meer dan 500 Chinezen in drie kampen. 

Thursday 5 March 2026

An interpretive look at the economists at the helm of the New Order reveals the intriguing, paradoxical nature of the regime’s brand of conservative modernization and their role as its tormented architects. 

26 February 2026

Chilean Southern Patagonia has emerged as a frontier for the expansion of global networks of production and conservation. Over recent decades, marine salmon farming has expanded into peripheral coastal territories, while fisheries such as king crab have been increasingly integrated into global commodity chains. At the same time, state-led and private conservation initiatives have materialized through the establishment of various terrestrial and marine protected areas.

24 February 2026

This study presents preliminary findings from built-environment research based on audiovisual documentation from the Recording the Future (RtF) project, which spans more than 22 years. 

19 February 2026

In this seminar, Najmah will discuss her current book project, The Sholeha paradox: Mothers, deception, and the HIV struggle in Indonesia, to offer a rare and intimate look at a hidden crisis unfolding within the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.

12 February 2026

Through recent collaborations with KITLV, Theo has explored ways of engaging artistically with collections from colonial contexts. From a photographic archive depicting baboe in Pematang Siantar to a Batak wooden staff called tunggal panaluan, each encounter led him to recalibrate the notion of artistic practice itself. Rather than making artworks about archives or collections, he approaches the act of making as a potential site in which established modes of institutional meaning-making can be temporarily suspended.

10 February 2026

In its public diplomacy between 1949 and 1962, the Netherlands consistently claimed that its presence in Netherlands New Guinea – also widely referred to at the time as West New Guinea (WNG) and today as West Papua – was not of a colonial nature. 

5 February 2026

This book's analysis is based on Malay manuscripts and texts about the body, sex, and sexuality. These include religious guidebooks on sexual techniques and etiquette, of which some are translated from the original Arabic or Persian, but almost all of which have been adapted for local Malay relevance.

29 January 2026

What happens to a temple when its abbot passes away? Based on ethnographic materials from a royal temple in urban Bangkok, this presentation examines the social and spiritual structures revealed through an abbot’s funeral. 

27 January 2026

Women and older adults in the Global South bear a disproportionate share of climate impacts, yet they possess resilience knowledge that can inform adaptation planning. 

22 January 2026

In mid-1919, assistant teacher Oepik Amin penned a poem that detailed how women teachers from Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra connected in the periodical Perempoean Bergerak and pleaded that their peers ‘hear this call’. Her contribution demonstrates one way in which women teachers who were geographically distant from each other forged a gendered professional identity through Malay-language periodicals. 

20 January 2026

Who is Sutan Sjahrir, this erudite man who played an important role in the road to Indonesia's independence? Documentary photographer Isabelle Boon and anthropologist Fridus Steijlen are working on a four episode podcast series about this intriguing man.

15 January 2026

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is renowned world wide for its art collection, with the seventeenth century at its heart, featuring Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals. As many European national museums built in the 19th century, its focus has been on the pride and glory of the Netherlands. Still, the 17th century is also the century of the foundation of the Dutch East India and West India Companies.

16 December 2025

As a history of streets from the saddle, this talk examines how bicycles shaped everyday rule and colonial mobility in Indonesia. Drawing on Reza's article-in-progress, it traces how the bicycle, a modest technology, became central to decisions about who could move, at what speed, and in which part of the road. Following David Arnold’s notion of “modest modernity”, the bicycle is treated as an everyday machine that carried heavy political weight. Newspapers, police ordinances, popular traffic manuals, and military cycling regulations reveal a fine-grained “street sovereignty” that worked through lamps, bells, lanes, and drills.

4 December 2025

As a braided history of people of Asian and African descent in the nineteenth-century Caribbean, Catherine Peters' book project Laboring Neighbors tells the story of abolition and indenture through the ecologies where indentured Asian migrants and Afro-descendant residents lived, formed kin, and met in the interstices where colonial authority broke down. 

28 November 2025

During this public meeting Daniel Tua Ompusunggu & Jupita Sinurat, members of the heritage team Jabu Sihol from Pematangsiantar, Sumut, North Sumatra, will give a presentation on the culture (past, present & future) of the Batak people of North Sumatra, Indonesia: 'Faces of Batak heritage'.

27 November

On 19 February 1949, a group of Dutch soldiers massacred a number of health workers and wounded Indonesian soldiers in Peniwen village, Malang, East Java. To commemorate this event, the Peniwen Affair monument was established in 1983, as a reminder of one of East Java’s ‘heroic’ moment during the Indonesian Revolution. The case even gain international recognition when the Dutch court decided to provide compensation for the widowed victims of Peniwen in 2016. 

24 November 2025

We are delighted to invite you to the screening of the documentary film Gail and Bharat directed by Somnath Waghmare (director of Chaityabhumi) The documentary traces the lives of anti-caste scholars and activists Gail Omvedt and Bharat Patankar, and the journey of the movement they led in India. Following screenings of the film at various universities and civil society organizations in the UK and Germany, we are happy to host the film and the filmmaker in the Netherlands.  Mr. Waghmare will introduce the film and take questions from the audience.

20 November 2025

Traditional view on customary law and traditional authority often portrays adat as a self-contained, community-based system operating beyond the reach of the state and market economy. This assumption, however, does not hold in contemporary Bali. Adat law, institutions, and practices now play a central role in local governance and politics, shaped in part by state policy and political proximity with state actors.