Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives - Decoseas

🌿 Masterclass: Wastelands & Urban Ecologies
📅 11 May 2026
📍 University of Amsterdam

What kinds of life emerge in the cracks of the city?

Join Sandra Jasper (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) for a NICA Masterclass exploring urban wastelands as sites of biodiversity, memory, and more-than-human coexistence. From abandoned railways to post-industrial zones, these “in-between” spaces invite us to rethink how urban ecologies are shaped, sensed, and inhabited.

For those working with sound, this also opens questions around listening as method: how do we attune to these environments, and what forms of knowledge emerge through sonic practices?

👂 Relevant for artists, researchers, and anyone engaged with sound, ecology, and urban space.

👉 More info & registration:
https://www.cities.humanities.uva.nl/news/nica-masterclass-wastelands-and-urban-ecologies-with-sandra-jasper-friedrich-alexander-universitat-erlangen-nurnberg-11-may-2026-2/

Satu minggu lagi!

[English below]

🎧 Apakah Anda bekerja dengan suara-suara dari komunitas Anda?

Mungkin Anda sedang merekam cerita lisan turun-temurun, menyelamatkan rekaman kaset lama, mendokumentasikan suara-suara keseharian di lingkungan Anda, atau menghubungkan kembali masyarakat dengan rekaman bersejarah mereka? Tawid Grant hadir untuk mendukung proyek-proyek kecil yang dikelola oleh komunitas, dengan fokus pada warisan suara lokal dan regional di Asia Tenggara.

💡 Apa yang bisa Anda dapatkan dari hibah ini?

Anda bisa mengajukan dana hingga €500 untuk menjalankan proyek warisan suara atau arsip selama enam bulan. Proyeknya bisa bermacam-macam: mengubah rekaman analog menjadi digital, melakukan perekaman lapangan, membuat karya kreatif dari arsip suara, atau inisiatif lainnya yang memperkuat ikatan komunitas dengan arsip suara dan budaya warisan mereka.

📝 Cara mendaftar

Kirimkan proposal singkat (dalam satu file PDF) yang berisi penjelasan tentang ide proyek Anda, tujuannya, rincian anggaran, dan jadwal pelaksanaan. Sertakan juga biografi singkat dan surat dukungan. Tidak perlu menggunakan bahasa yang terlalu formal atau rumit — yang terpenting adalah jelaskan ide Anda dengan jujur dan mudah dipahami.

Setelah proyek selesai, Anda cukup mengirimkan laporan singkat beserta dokumentasi (bisa berupa foto, audio, atau video) yang nantinya akan dipublikasikan di situs web Sonic Entanglements.

📅 Batas waktu pendaftaran: 15 November 2025

🔗 Info lengkap dan pendaftaran: https://sonic-entanglements.com/tawid-grant

ONE WEEK TO GO!

🎧 Do you work with the sounds of your community?
Are you recording oral traditions, restoring old tapes, documenting everyday soundscapes, or reconnecting communities with historical recordings? The Tawid Grant supports small, community-led projects that engage with local and regional sound heritage in Southeast Asia.

💡 What the grant offers
You can apply for up to €500 to carry out a sound heritage or archive-based project over six months. This could involve digitising materials, field recording, creative reinterpretation, or other initiatives that strengthen community relationships to sound archives and heritage practices.

📝 How to apply
Submit a short proposal (as one PDF) describing your project idea, its purpose, budget, and timeline, along with a brief bio and letters of support. You don’t need academic language or elaborate plans — clarity and sincerity matter most.
After completing your project, you’ll share a short report and some documentation (photos, audio, or video) to be featured on the Sonic Entanglements website.

📅 Deadline: 15 November 2025
🔗 Learn more and apply: https://sonic-entanglements.com/tawid-grant

Please share with those who might be interested!

Tawid Grant Tawid Grant is aimed at bridging or supporting small-scale sound archive research and initiatives. The grant is open to individuals/organizations working on sound archive projects based in Southeas…

Deadline (5 May) approaching
Call for Applications:
PhD in Sound Heritage
Open to Southeast Asian Candidates

https://sejarah.fib.ugm.ac.id/call-for-applications-phd-programme-in-sound-heritage-studies/

Project Overview
Re:Sound renegotiates Eurocentric understandings, conceptions and curations of “heritage”. This Eurocentrism obscures the coloniality of the history that “heritage” is supposed to narrate and obstructs the access of source community stakeholders to their own “heritage”. There is no scholarly or curatorial model to decenter European agencies and diversify understandings of heritage (curation). Re:Sound bridges this knowledge gap by focusing on sonic heritage, in particular two colonial sound collections from Indonesia, now located in the Netherlands, The Jaap Kunst Collection at the Allard Pierson / University of Amsterdam / Universiteit van Amsterdam, and the Philips Holland Omroep-Hollandse Indies radio broadcasts at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision/ Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid (NISV).

Re:Sound explores whether and how the inherent divergence of validations and understandings of sonic expression provides ways to reconsider established notions of heritage. It does this through Southeast Asian PhD and stakeholder research in the above Netherlands-based sound collections, and by fostering a transcontinental and inter-Asian curatorial network of academics and source community stakeholders through workshops and summer schools.

With these activities, Re:Sound aims to improve access to Netherlands-based sound collections for Southeast Asian source community researchers and stakeholders. This improvement emphatically includes options for physical and digital restitution. Through the research of the next generation of Southeast Asian scholars and stakeholders, Re:Sound moreover employs colonial sound recordings as historical sources, attending to those recorded voices that are not represented in written historical sources and hence run the risk of being “written out” of history.

Through a more inclusive historiography due to it being sound-source based and through improved access of source community stakeholders to their own heritage, Re:Sound redirects curatorial agency to Southeast Asian stakeholders – a redirection that impacts a diversification of notions of “heritage” and a decentering of European agency in heritage curation).

The Collections
The NISV holds the radio broadcasts of the Philips Holland Omroep-Hollandse Indies radio and various uncatalogued audio and video recordings related to the Dutch East Indies from the 1920s. They contain music, rituals, broadcasts of political and cultural events, speeches, debates, interviews and the coverage of insurgencies, festivities, revolts, and wars. NISV’s catalogued collections are hosted on CLARIAH and DANS, online access platforms and interfaces that are only available to researchers physically present in the Netherlands.

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) holds the Jaap Kunst Collection, consisting of 300+ sound recordings on wax cylinders from the islands of Nias, Sumatera, Java, Bali, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Kisar, the Kai Islands, the Moluccas and West Papua; hundreds of musical instruments from those locations; silent films registering dance and performance practices from those locations; 6,500 photographs of music and dance practices, and musical instruments from those locations; research reports of research expeditions to these locations; 40,000 pages of correspondence in Dutch, English, German, Indonesian/Malay and Javanese, with researchers (both within and outside Indonesia from a variety of disciplines), informants, officials, musicians, cultural entrepreneurs, and academic and archive institutions; teaching materials; publication manuscripts.

Jaap Kunst (1891–1960) and his wife Katy Kunst-Van Wely (1897–1992) “produced” this material (through recording, assembling, organizing, categorizing, annotating, writing and publishing) between 1919 and 1934 when he was a civil servant of the Dutch colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies. Through this work and his excellent international networking skills, Jaap Kunst continues to be regarded as a “founding father” of the discipline of ethnomusicology: Kunst’s methodological approaches were adopted in virtually the entire Anglophone academic world. His Collection is, therefore, one of the richest and well-known ethnographic collections worldwide, pertaining to the history of Indonesia, the performance cultures of Indonesia, colonial history, and the history of science (anthropology and ethnomusicology.

PhD Programme
This project offers one (1) fully funded PhD position in sound heritage studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada with the following details:

Supervisory Team:
Supervisor: Dr. S Margana (UGM)
Co-Supervisor: Dr. Barbara Titus (UvA) and dr. meLê yamomo (UvA)
Candidate Responsibilities:
‣ Complete the doctoral dissertation with contractual obligations.
‣ Co-author at least one peer-reviewed article with the supervisory team.
‣ Collaborate with digital archivists and local heritage organisations to develop the repository.
‣ Present findings at international conferences (e.g., EUROSEAS, ICAS, ICTM – Southeast Asia).
‣ Actively participate in our meetings, workshops, and summer school.

Funding Details:
‣ Full tuition coverage for three years.
‣ A monthly allowance will be provided for living expenses during the PhD program: €500 per month in Yogyakarta for 18 months and €2,500 per month in Amsterdam for 18 months.
‣ Research budget up to €6,000 per year.
‣ Conference allowance.
‣ Book allowance.
‣ Health insurance.
‣ Family allowance (if applicable).

Eligibility Requirements:
‣ A Master’s degree in heritage studies, history, musicology, anthropology, cultural studies, or a related field is required by July 2025.
‣ Experience and a strong interest in interdisciplinary approaches, the issues of colonialism, and heritage studies.
‣ Applicants must be under 40 years old.
‣ Proficiency in English (minimum IELTS 7.0 or TOEFL 95); Understanding a second language related to the chosen field sites is beneficial.
‣ Ability to travel for extended fieldwork and/or archival research periods.
‣ This call is open to applicants from Southeast Asia.

How to Apply:
Applicants should submit the following documents:
‣ A research proposal in English (maximum 2,500 words) outlining the research project, its significance, and methodology.
‣ A statement of interest (maximum 1,000 words) explaining your suitability for the project.
‣ A current CV highlighting relevant academic and/or fieldwork experience.
‣ Academic transcripts and degree certificates.
‣ Two recommendation letters should be sent directly by your referees to the email address provided below by the application deadline.
‣ A sample of prior work (e.g., a research paper, digital project, or archival project).
‣ Applications must be submitted as a single PDF via email to [email protected] by 5 May 2025.

Selection Process:
‣Applications will be evaluated based on academic merit, their alignment with the project’s objectives, and their research potential. Shortlisted candidates will receive an invitation for an online interview scheduled for 15 May 2025. For inquiries, contact [email protected]

Call for Applications: PhD Programme in Sound Heritage Studies – Departemen Sejarah Call for Applications: PhD Programme in Sound Heritage Studies penelitian 24 Maret 2025, 14.03 Oleh: sejarah 0 Restituting, Reconnecting, Reimagining Sound Heritage (Re:Sound) Institutions : Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) and Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) Funding Body : The Dutch Research Council....

Call for Applications: PhD Programme in Sound Heritage Studies

Project Overview
Re:Sound renegotiates Eurocentric understandings, conceptions and curations of “heritage”. This Eurocentrism obscures the coloniality of the history that “heritage” is supposed to narrate and obstructs the access of source community stakeholders to their own “heritage”. There is no scholarly or curatorial model to decenter European agencies and diversify understandings of heritage (curation). Re:Sound bridges this knowledge gap by focusing on sonic heritage, in particular two colonial sound collections from Indonesia, now located in the Netherlands, The Jaap Kunst Collection at the University of Amsterdam, and the Philips Holland Omroep-Hollandse Indies radio broadcasts at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NISV).

Re:Sound explores whether and how the inherent divergence of validations and understandings of sonic expression provides ways to reconsider established notions of heritage. It does this through Southeast Asian PhD and stakeholder research in the above Netherlands-based sound collections, and by fostering a transcontinental and inter-Asian curatorial network of academics and source community stakeholders through workshops and summer schools.

With these activities, Re:Sound aims to improve access to Netherlands-based sound collections for Southeast Asian source community researchers and stakeholders. This improvement emphatically includes options for physical and digital restitution. Through the research of the next generation of Southeast Asian scholars and stakeholders, Re:Sound moreover employs colonial sound recordings as historical sources, attending to those recorded voices that are not represented in written historical sources and hence run the risk of being “written out” of history.

Through a more inclusive historiography due to it being sound-source based and through improved access of source community stakeholders to their own heritage, Re:Sound redirects curatorial agency to Southeast Asian stakeholders – a redirection that impacts a diversification of notions of “heritage” and a decentering of European agency in heritage curation).

The Collections
The NISV holds the radio broadcasts of the Philips Holland Omroep-Hollandse Indies radio and various uncatalogued audio and video recordings related to the Dutch East Indies from the 1920s. They contain music, rituals, broadcasts of political and cultural events, speeches, debates, interviews and the coverage of insurgencies, festivities, revolts, and wars. NISV’s catalogued collections are hosted on CLARIAH and DANS, online access platforms and interfaces that are only available to researchers physically present in the Netherlands.

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) holds the Jaap Kunst Collection, consisting of 300+ sound recordings on wax cylinders from the islands of Nias, Sumatera, Java, Bali, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Kisar, the Kai Islands, the Moluccas and West Papua; hundreds of musical instruments from those locations; silent films registering dance and performance practices from those locations; 6,500 photographs of music and dance practices, and musical instruments from those locations; research reports of research expeditions to these locations; 40,000 pages of correspondence in Dutch, English, German, Indonesian/Malay and Javanese, with researchers (both within and outside Indonesia from a variety of disciplines), informants, officials, musicians, cultural entrepreneurs, and academic and archive institutions; teaching materials; publication manuscripts.

Jaap Kunst (1891–1960) and his wife Katy Kunst-Van Wely (1897–1992) “produced” this material (through recording, assembling, organizing, categorizing, annotating, writing and publishing) between 1919 and 1934 when he was a civil servant of the Dutch colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies. Through this work and his excellent international networking skills, Jaap Kunst continues to be regarded as a “founding father” of the discipline of ethnomusicology: Kunst’s methodological approaches were adopted in virtually the entire Anglophone academic world. His Collection is, therefore, one of the richest and well-known ethnographic collections worldwide, pertaining to the history of Indonesia, the performance cultures of Indonesia, colonial history, and the history of science (anthropology and ethnomusicology.

PhD Programme
This project offers one (1) fully funded PhD position in sound heritage studies at UGM with the following

Supervisory Team:
Supervisor: Dr. Sri Margana (UGM)
Co-Supervisor: Dr. B. (Barbara) Titus (UvA) and Dr. M.J. (meLê) yamomo (UvA)

Candidate Responsibilities:
‣ Complete the doctoral dissertation with contractual obligations.
‣ Co-author at least one peer-reviewed article with the supervisory team.
‣ Collaborate with digital archivists and local heritage organisations to develop the repository.
‣ Present findings at international conferences (e.g., EUROSEAS, ICAS, ICTM – Southeast Asia).
‣ Actively participate in our meetings, workshops, and summer school.

Funding Details:
‣ Full tuition coverage for three years.
‣ A monthly allowance will be provided for living expenses during the PhD program: €500 per month in Yogyakarta for 18 months and €2,500 per month in Amsterdam for 18 months.
‣ Research budget up to €6,000 per year.
‣ Conference allowance.
‣ Book allowance.
‣ Health insurance.
‣ Family allowance (if applicable).

Eligibility Requirements:
‣ A Master’s degree in heritage studies, history, musicology, anthropology, cultural studies, or a related field is required by July 2025.
‣ Experience and a strong interest in interdisciplinary approaches, the issues of colonialism, and heritage studies.
‣ Applicants must be under 40 years old.
‣ Proficiency in English (minimum IELTS 7.0 or TOEFL 95); Understanding a second language related to the chosen field sites is beneficial.
‣ Ability to travel for extended fieldwork and/or archival research periods.
‣ This call is open to applicants from Southeast Asia.

How to Apply:
Applicants should submit the following documents:

‣ A research proposal in English (maximum 2,500 words) outlining the research project, its significance, and methodology.
‣ A statement of interest (maximum 1,000 words) explaining your suitability for the project.
‣ A current CV highlighting relevant academic and/or fieldwork experience.
‣ Academic transcripts and degree certificates.
‣ Two recommendation letters should be sent directly by your referees to the email address provided below by the application deadline.
‣ A sample of prior work (e.g., a research paper, digital project, or archival project).
‣ Applications must be submitted as a single PDF via email to [email protected] by 5 May 2025.

Selection Process:
‣Applications will be evaluated based on academic merit, their alignment with the project’s objectives, and their research potential. Shortlisted candidates will receive an invitation for an online interview scheduled for 15 May 2025. For inquiries, contact [email protected]

For more information see: https://sejarah.fib.ugm.ac.id/call-for-applications-phd-programme-in-sound-heritage-studies/

From April 2025 until roughly July 2026 the physical, written archive material of the Jaap Kunst Collection (letters, photographs, ethnographic reports, publication manuscripts, teaching material) at the Allard Pierson Museum of the University of Amsterdam will be unavailable to researchers due to digitization. We hope the Collection will be searchable online from mid-2026 onwards! Sound recordings remain available at

The Jaap Kunst Collection – Hearing the Indonesian Archipelago The Jaap Kunst Collection, managed by the University of Amsterdam, is a sound archive that encompasses recordings, photographs, silent films, and correspondences collected by the Dutch ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst (1891-1960). This collection allows us to imagine how the Indonesian Archipelago sound...

On February 27, 2025, the Theater Collection will be 100 years old. During this anniversary year, we want to reflect on the past of this unique collection with the symposium Het Archief Speculatief: verleden en heden van de theatercollectie / The Speculative Archive: Past and Present of the Theater Collection , but also look to the future. The Allard Pierson is the only place in the Netherlands where a collection is formed about Dutch theater. And nothing is as fleeting as the performing arts, which also makes them vulnerable.

Symposium
In collaboration with Theaterwetenschap Amsterdam / Theatre Studies Department-University of Amsterdam and the Theater in the Netherlands Foundation (TiN), the llard Pierson organizes the two-day symposium het Archief Speculatief: past and future of the theater collection.

On Thursday 27 February we offer a stage to theatre scholars MeLê Yamomo (University of Amsterdam), Ricarda Franzen (University of Amsterdam), Mark Fleishman (University of Cape Town) who will share their perspectives in keynotes and presentations. To conclude the first day, Collectief Blauwdruk will translate the relevance of theatre archives for the field into a one-off performance about their (theatrical) search in the archive at the University Theatre.

The second day, Friday 28 February , focuses on the speculative perspectives of researchers, theatre makers, dramaturges and other professionals from the cultural sector.

This day takes the form of an experiment, with participants contributing in various forms, such as artistic interventions, lectures, manifestos and performances.

With this symposium we want to reflect not only on the heritage that the theatre collection forms, but also stimulate new dialogues and collaborations within the cultural sector. This symposium focuses on the importance of archiving for the future of theatre, and on the question of how we can preserve,
expand and reinterpret our heritage.

This symposium is made possible by: Podiumkunst.net, European Network of Information Centres for the Performing Arts (ENICPA), Stichting Theater in Nederland (TiN), Chair of Theatre Studies of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), The Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (ASH) of the University of Amsterdam and the Allard Pierson.

For more information and registration (to attend for free), please see the webpage:
https://allardpierson.nl/events/het-archief-speculatief/

Het Archief Speculatief Op 27 februari 2025 bestaat de Theatercollectie 100 jaar. Tijdens dit jubileumjaar willen wij met het symposium Het Archief Speculatief: verleden en heden van de theatercollectie stilstaan bij het verleden van deze unieke collectie, maar ook kijken naar de toekomst. Het Allard...

In the News

Announcing: DeCoSEAS Southeast Asia-Europe Visiting Fellows 2023

https://www.decoseas.org/news/announcing-decoseas-southeast-asia-europe-visiting-fellows-2023

Merry Christmas!!!