Katja Paijens is a PhD candidate based at KITLV and the Leiden University Institute for History. She is writing a political biography of Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak (1913-1978). Her thesis focuses on Hamid’s role in and significance to Indonesia’s decolonization and state formation (1945-1950).

Sultan Hamid II is an interesting person through whom to investigate the decolonization of Indonesia. Ethnically, socially, culturally and politically Hamid was affiliated to Indonesia, though by upbringing, education, marriage and as a military officer in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) he was Europe-oriented and connected to the Dutch. Hamid was a proponent of an independent Indonesia founded as a federal state, not a unitary state as the Republicans aimed for. Hamid’s unique position provides important new insights in Indonesia’s complex process of decolonization and the different stakeholders involved in it.

Paijens studied Economical and Social History at the University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales. She has mainly specialized in the imperial history of Indonesia under Dutch colonial rule and photos as a historical resource. Later on her research focus extended to the decolonization of Indonesia.

Previously she has worked at the Special Collections of the Leiden University Library, Museum Bronbeek, Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, and World Press Photo.