Author: KITLV

"See what is left of our rubber trees", says Titik, the leader of a group of angry villagers. After a magnificent boat ride through majestic forest, I met his group in Rawang, Central Kalimantan, standing at the edge of ...

Framing Asia will be a monthly filmscreening during the Leiden Asia Year, organised by the KITLV, IIAS ( and the department Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University. Framing Asia is ...

The relocation of the KITLV colletion to Leiden University Library resulted in the (re)discovery of valuable source materials that had not yet been made available to the public. Among them are two hundred fifty issues of Sin Min (新民), ‘The New...

Indonesia made international headlines with its 2006 Anti-Pornography Bill and controversial virginity tests for female military recruits in 2015. The ensuing debate on decency, chastity and the perceived...

Fidel Castro has died. Over the final years of his long life he admonished his compatriots to complete the mission he started in the 1950s. Will they? Gert Oostindie does not think so: but neither does he expect a sudden regime change....

While the concept of a ‘sharing economy’ is gaining popularity in modern societies, in Eastern Indonesia it is a traditional way of coping with daily life. Based on her fieldwork in Sumba, Jacqueline Vel outlines some of the difficulties that researchers and...

Oral history is a promising source for further research in the KITLV project on Dutch military operations in Indonesia between 1945 and 1950. Interviews with Dutch war veterans give new insights into the use of ...

When in 2002 Indonesia established a constitutional court nobody anticipated just how important this new institution was going to be. Its rulings are widely reported and they have had an impact on fields ranging from economic policy...

One of the most common social sciences research methods is (online) surveys. While there are many benefits to this method, there are also many pitfalls, like, not being able to get people to fill out the survey you ...

Economics, Empire, Eschatology: the Global Context of Jewish Settlement in the Americas, 1650-70'. In: Itinerario 40, special issue 02, August 2016, pp. 293-310. The Dutch and English offered Spanish and Portuguese ...