The phallus, or lingga, is a prominent symbol in Indonesian culture. It can be found in various artifacts and sites – from the 15th-century Javanese-Hindu temple Sukuh in Central Java to the Monas...
‘Continues to amaze me’, ‘it is dangerous’, ‘they drive like lunatics’ – these were some of the comments on social media when friends posted pictures of motorcyclists in Ambon. Last year I took to the streets of Ambon on my motorcycle, travelling...
As the latest Venezuelan security threat and the cycle of unrest in Haiti’s political morass came to a head, threatening to hem in Guyana’s quest for peaceful ...
Recent events in Indonesian politics, commonly characterized by chaos and the role that money plays, tell a story of tragedy and farce. The unexpected resignation of Ratu Ngadu Bonu Wollah, once seen as a beacon of hope for women in ...
When I arrived in mid-January in Ambon for my second year at the Pattimura University I saw Christmas and New Year decor on the streets, which reminded me of the displays I saw the year before at the end of ...
A personal journey into the secrets of Indonesian cuisine Talking about terasi, the shrimp or seafood paste (fermented) from Indonesia, opens up many avenues of discussion. Such was my experience...
There are things in daily life that seem to always continue without notice. For me, one of them is going to the hairdresser, more or less every six weeks. I only changed a hairdresser when he retired or when I moved. Visits...
Gelo – ‘disappointing and saddening’, in Javanese – is a good word to describe the feeling that might arise when visiting the thirteenth-century Singosari temple near ...
My most memorable Lunar New Year was a quarter of a century ago in Pontianak, the provincial capital of West Kalimantan. One month prior to this, news had started coming in about deadly clashes between the indigenous Dayak people ...
Last April, accompanied by Rosemarijn Hoefte, I visited the Dutch municipality of Ouder-Amstel. The city council at that time had requested research into its colonial...
As Selangor prepares to celebrate its Bugis Malay ruler’s birthday, it is interesting to look at how the sultanate itself was born from a mixture of Bugis and Malay elements. Sunday December 11th is the 78th birthday of the Sultan of Selangor...
The Russia-Ukraine War marks a watershed for contemporary international politics, ushering in a multipolar international system. Great powers...
“What’s the point?” you inquire, adjusting your pince-nez sceptically. And to that, we reply: loanwords are monuments of cultural contact. Once detected as such, they reveal human agency and encounters previously concealed by the misty shrouds of time...
Tropical coasts are being faced by unprecedented sustainability challenges, with climate change posing immediate threats, including ...
Since the upsurge of global history in the 1990s, the historiography of Indonesia has undergone substantial change. In the Netherlands and in today’s democratic Indonesia, efforts are underway ...
Imagine what Indonesian historical research could look like if there were no language barriers, no travel costs and no visa issues, and instead just a strong Wi-Fi signal...
There is a long tradition of academic words being derived from Greek and Latin. In fact, some common words – such as neuroscience, metadata, and heteronormative – consist of one Greek and one Latin element...
The notebook of a Yogyanese dance master might not seem an obvious source for deepening our historical perspectives. And yet the notation of a female bedhaya ...
My travel in 2014 led me to four seasons of archaeological field surveys in the area of Fort-Liberté (Figure 1), with the task of documenting traces of human activities and thereby of proposing...
I visited the archaeological sites at En Bas Saline and Puerto Real for the first time with some colleagues from Leiden University in summer 2014. Scholars have placed the location of La Navidad ...
Blog by David Kloos at leidenislamblog.nl about Citi Yousoff from Malaysia, one of the very few female calligraphers with an ijazah (a traditional licence) and...
Although I have been far from Indonesia for some time now, I still consider myself to have the right to regard the country that is 18,000 kilometres away as my source of information, entertainment...
Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen has dominated the country’s politics for nearly 40 years. He recently announced he would like to rule for another decade. Often described as a “strongman” leader, his longevity has led some to describe Cambodia’s regime ...
This Sunday, 14 March 2021 is arguably the most important Balinese holiday: Nyepi or the day of silence, from the word sepi meaning quiet. It is the only Hindu holiday with the status of a national ...
It must have been in May 2004 when I sat down with my supervisor to discuss the research design of my PhD project. I wanted to study the Hindu-Muslim violence that had taken place in Gujarat, India in 2002....
“He’s nothing but a Pharisee!” states Ad, half-jokingly, revealing teeth besieged by plaque and tobacco stains. Teeth like his tell a tale of working-class hardship. I have never come across anything...
De situatie op Aruba in augustus 2020 beantwoordde aan vele Corona-clichés. Onzekerheid, afwezigheid, afstand. Er gold een avondklok en een samenscholingsverbod; mondkapjes waren verplicht en uitgaan was verboden. Ook de winkels waren dicht en kinderen hadden bijna ...
KITLV has established a cluster to do research on climate change This is new for us. It is a huge field with a rich literature. Like kids in a candy store , members of the research cluster have been circulating ...
On December 14 the College of Electors will vote to elect the next President of United States of America. “What?” your media-weary brain exclaims. “I thought that happened last month!”...
In August, the leader of the Dayak Red Army, Pangalongok Jilah, flew to Jakarta to ask President Jokowi to release Effendi Buhing from prison. Effendi is the leader of the indigenous community in ...
Tiny worms causing silent and insidious damage. In 1915 the Rockefeller Foundation brought its campaign to eradicate hookworms to Suriname. Tests found that more than 90 percent of the ...
The Black Lives Matter protest held on 10 June 2020 was originally planned to take place at Anton de Komplein in the Zuidoost district of Amsterdam. But due to the huge numbers expected to attend...
Where is my golden pen? An academic cannot be an anti-racist activist today without a smartphone. I know, I can also join a protest march and carry a placard stating that Black Lives Matter. I can, yes, but then I will...
Twelve years ago, I was in the KITLV special collections room, studying archival materials about the colonial subjugation of Aceh, the region on the northern tip of Sumatra. It took four decades, from the 1870s...
For the longest time, this little girl wanted to be white. She did not like her hair; she did not like her dark eyes; she did not like anything about the way she looked. She had very dry skin, and when she...
It was a sad moment in my academic life. Last week Friday afternoon, after months of intense writing, I had given myself the luxury of reading. I had been rearranging my bookshelves at home with adding ...
The Anthropology weblog 'Standplaats Wereld' published a blogpost by Shannon van Leeuwen, Evelien van Overveld and Fridus Steijlen about Evelien and Shannon's 'Corona home run' from fieldwork...
My search for Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak - about which I wrote in my previous blog - took me to Yogyakarta before visiting Pontianak itself. I was in Yogyakarta to improve my knowledge of the Indonesian language, culture and history. ...
Last November, I visited Pontianak, the capital of the Indonesian province of Kalimantan Barat. This city is inextricably linked with Max Alkadrie (1913-1978), better known as Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak ...
Small states rarely make world headlines, but dramatic political developments in Malta and Suriname over the past few days promptly catapulted these countries into the international limelight...
In Papoea zijn de afgelopen twee maanden mensen overal de straat op gegaan, de grootste publieke demonstratie van Papoea’s sinds jaren. Tientallen Papoea’s vonden daarbij de dood, honderden werden ...
Indonesia is a vast archipelago of 17,508 islands. With more than 265 million inhabitants, about 57% of whom inhabit the volcanic island of Java, it is also the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country. ...
Area Studies is shooting itself in the foot with its singular focus on dissertations. To be clear: during my PhD trajectory I had two wonderful supervisors, whose kindness, erudition and inquisitiveness were ...
I love election day in Indonesia. Particularly the moment the votes are counted. This is the moment when Indonesia’s democracy is at its most likable. Yes, I can worry about the role of money in the elections, the dominance of economic elites...
Blog by Ward Berenschot on newmandala.org. Indonesia’s home affairs minister, Tjahjo Kumolo, made quite some headlines last month when he suggested that Indonesia’s civil servants could “socialise” ...
Who is Panji, and what exactly is a Panji tale? Recently, on 21 September 2018, a special symposium was organised by the Leiden University Library and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) ...
Recently an Indonesian colleague asked me to write a reflection on my fieldwork experiences studying politics in India and Indonesia, for an Indonesian book on ethnographic fieldwork. Here is the English version. Doing research in the field can be tough....
Big conferences are crucial when it comes to meeting the celebrities in your field, and perhaps even striking up short conversations with them. And yet the cultural dynamics of these sites of gathering ...
On 8 and 9 October 2018, the KITLV organized a workshop on the subject of Academic research in a decolonizing world: Towards new ways of thinking and...
Seven years after South Sudan’s attainment of independence, the world may this week once again witness the birth of a new sovereign state. Next Sunday (4 November), citizens of the South...