08-07-2025

KITLV director Diana Suhardiman underlined in an interview on beritajatim.com the relevance of ecological history, focusing on its role as key methodological approach to understand how human, non-human, environment relations evolve over time. 

Moving beyond the conventional approach, which focused solely on the preservation of nature, Diana  places livelihoods and cultural aspects as an integral part of ecological history. Culture, society, and nature cannot be separated if we are to have a more thorough knowledge and better understanding to cope with climate challenges. To summarize, Diana asserted that ecological history, when paired with local knowledge, offers enormous potential for studying the Indonesian context and historiography.

In agreement with Diana, Akhmad Ryan Pratama, the head of History Education at the University of Jember, stated that there is a growing interest among Indonesians in learning more about ecological history, which has been neglected in Indonesian historiography for a long time. He provided numerous examples of how important it is to delve deeper into local archives and oral history to better understand climate change in Indonesia. Sudut Kalisat, a local collective located in Jember, also contributed to this lecture by presenting their activities, such as folklore mapping and village archives, to create awareness among Jember's communities.

Read more (in Indonesian)