Henk Schulte Nordholt (former head of research at KITLV) is Honorary Fellow at KITLV and emeritus professor of Indonesian History at Leiden University. His main fields of research include Southeast Asian history, contemporary politics in Indonesia, political violence, and the anthropology of colonialism. He has a special interest in Balinese studies.

Schulte Nordholt studied history at the VU University in Amsterdam, from which he graduated in 1980 (cum laude). In 1988 he obtained his PhD degree (cum laude) in social sciences at the Free University with a thesis on the history of the political system on the island of Bali. He taught anthropology and Asian history at the University of Amsterdam from 1985 until 2005. From 1999 until 2007 he was IIAS professor of Asian History at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and from 2007 until 2014 Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the VU University in Amsterdam. He was the Head of Research at KITLV from 2002-2019. 

He has coordinated a large Dutch Indonesian research program ‘Governance, Markets and Citizens (2013-2017)’, which is sponsored by the Scientific Program Indonesia – Netherlands (SPIN), and has coordinated the research project ‘Indonesia in Transition: From Revolution to Nation-Building, 1943-1958’ (2017-2021), which was financed by NWO. 

Selected Publications

Schulte Nordholt, Henk &  Harry Poeze, Merdeka; De strijd om de Indonesische onafhankelijkheid en de ongewisse opkomst van de Republiek, 1945-1950. Amsterdam: Walburg Pers 2022.  An Indonesian translation was published by Pustaka Obor in Jakarta (2023), an English translation was published by Amsterdam University Press (2024).  

Schulte Nordholt, Henk & Pierre Asselin, 'Cracking down on revolutionary zeal and violence: Local dynamics and early colonial responses to the independence struggle in Indochina and the Indonesian archipelago, 1945-1947', in: Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis (eds.), Empire's  violent end; Comparing Dutch, British and French wars of decolonization, 1945-1962, pp. 71-95. Cornell University Press, 2022.  

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, Südostasien, Vol. 12. Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2018. 

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, Ward Berenschot and Laurens Bakker, Citizenship and democratisation in Southeast Asia. Leiden: Brill 2016. 

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, Een Geschiedenis van Zuidoost-Azië. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2016. 

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, 'Decentralization and democracy in Indonesia', in: R. Robison (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Politics, pp. 229-241. Routledge 2013. 

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, ‘Dams and dynasty, and the colonial transformation of Balinese irrigation management’, Human Ecology 39, pp. 21-28, 2011. 

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, ‘Modernity and cultural citizenship in the Netherlands Indies’,  Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 42, pp. 435-457, 2011. 

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, Indonesië na Soeharto; Reformasi en Restauratie. Amsterdam 2008. 

Schulte Nordholt, Henk, Bali, an open fortress, 1995–2005; Regional autonomy, electoral democracy and entrenched identities. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2007.