KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

LAUNCH | The price of power: Campaign finance and vote buying in Indonesia’s 2024 elections

How much does it cost to win an election in Indonesia and who pays the price? A new report from UGM (PolGov) and KITLV, supported by LP3ES, offers the first comprehensive, data-driven answer. The study finds that winning district-head candidates spent an average of 36.8 billion rupiah (USD 2.1 million).

The report will be launched on 29 June in Jakarta. An online English and Indonesian version of the report can be found here:

Report | The price of power: Campaign finance and vote buying in Indonesia’s 2024 elections How much does it cost to win an election in Indonesia and who pays the price? A new report from UGM (PolGov) and KITLV, supported by LP3ES, offers the first comprehensive, data-driven answer. The study finds that winning district-head candidates spent an average of 36.8 billion rupiah (USD 2.1 milli...

SEA SEMINAR | Temporalities of memory: Religion, history, and the unstable past in Java | Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan & Verena Meyer | 17 June @ 12.00-13.30 PM (CET)

How have the Javanese, in the course of history, engaged with their own past? What kinds of past were important to specific communities, and how did they go about retrieving and recording it? And what can these processes tell us about the relationship between these historical imaginations on the one hand and understandings of temporality, textuality, and metaphysics on the other?

Info & registration:
https://www.kitlv.nl/event/sastrawan-meyer/

This seminar will be held on-site only.

GRANT | Project on Chinese diaspora in Makassar

KITLV researchers Louie Buana, Queenie Lin, and Tom Hoogervorst and two collaborators from Indonesia and Taiwan, Andi Batara Al Isra (Universitas Hasanuddin) and Fabio Yuchung Lee (National Tsing Hua University), have been awarded a € 90,000 grant for their project on Chinese diaspora in Makassar.

They received the grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (CCKF) for the period 2026–2028.

Grant | Project on Chinese diaspora in Makassar The Mazu temple (the Chinese sea goddess) in Makassar remains the cultural and religious anchor for the Chinese diaspora.

Caribbean seminar | The gift of love as decolonial practice in Off-White by Astrid Roemer and In Times Like These by Zee Edgell | Valeria Grinberg Pla | 9 June @ 15.00 PM (CET)

What's the epistemic force of literature? How can fiction articulate a feminist decolonial perspective?

In this talk Valeria Grinberg Pla will argue that Zee Edgell and Astrid Roemer use literature as a site of felt knowledge, that is, a site for the production, discussion and transformation of received ideas about the place of women in Belize and Suriname—and the place of Belize and Suriname in the postcolonial world.

More info & registration:
https://www.kitlv.nl/events/grinberg-pla/

Anniversary seminar | Caribbean fossil modernity: Ordinary disaster and ordinary repair in the Plastipelagos | Kasia Mika-Bresolin | 4 June @ 15.30 PM (CET)

From Haiti as the starting point, this presentation examines the varied manifestations of fossil fuels, as plastic, petrol or toxic fumes, to conceptualize the unequal duress of Caribbean fossil modernity.

More info & registration:
https://www.kitlv.nl/event/mika-bresolin/

UUKS seminar | Continuity and change in the Javanese foodways of Suriname: Towards a sensory ethnography of taste | Julian Santosoaji | 2 June @ 15.00 PM (CET)

How do food practices evolve after migration? To what extent do metaphors like “salad bowl” and “melting pot” accurately reflect the complex nature of diasporic culinary changes in multicultural environments?

Between 1890 and the early 1930s, thousands of Javanese contract labourers were transported by the Dutch colonial government to plantations in Suriname. From the moment the ships set sail and rations of salted meat were provided, a distinctive path of taste development was underway, a long process which continues to this day.

In this session, Julian Santosoaji combines his personal reflections as an Indonesian Javanese cook with insights from his pre-fieldwork research on Surinamese Javanese food practices. In seeking to understand the mechanisms by which food practices change (or remain the same), he makes a case for the importance of sensory ethnography.

More info & registration:
https://www.kitlv.nl/event/santosoaji/

175 jaar KITLV Festival | 26 juni | 9.30-17.00 uur

In 2026 viert het KITLV haar 175-jarig bestaan. We vieren en reflecteren op de afgelopen kwart eeuw met een Publieksfestival op 26 juni 2026.

In het gevarieerde programma is er ruimte voor debatten en reflectie op de afgelopen 25 jaar, maar is er ook aandacht voor kunst, eten, dans, documentaires en spoken word. Bij de universiteitsbibliotheek (UBL) worden manuscripten, foto’s, kaarten en andere objecten uit de KITLV Collectie belicht.

De evenementen vinden plaats in het Herta Mohrgebouw op de begane grond en eerste verdieping en in de (UBL) op de begane grond en tweede verdieping.

Toegang: gratis.

Meer informatie & registratie:
https://www.kitlv.nl/kitlv-175-jaar/

PANEL DISCUSSION | Social media and authoritarianism in Southeast | 28 May @ 15.30 PM (CET)

Is social media driving a trend towards authoritarianism in Southeast Asia? How are influence operations on social media organised, and what can civil society to do resist such campaigns? This panel brings together three scholars to discuss the deepening entanglement between social media platforms and authoritarian consolidation across Southeast Asia.

Drawing on fieldwork and comparative research from Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, the speakers explore how governments and political elites have learned to weaponize the very platforms once celebrated as tools of democratic opening.

Info & registration:
https://www.kitlv.nl/event/panel-discussion-social-media/

TOMORROW: ANNIVERSARY SEMINAR | Hallyu in motion: Translanguaging and the circulation of Korean language in Indonesia | Nurenzia Yannuar | 7 May @15.30 PM

This talk discusses how the Korean Wave (Hallyu) has actively introduced the Korean language into Indonesia’s sociolinguistic landscape. Combining social media analysis and linguistic landscape data, it shows how Korean has become embedded in everyday communication and urban visibility.

More info & registration:
https://www.kitlv.nl/event/yannuar/

GRANT | 16th Silvia de Groot Fund grant awarded to two winners

The 16th Silvia de Groot Fund research grant was awarded to Danick Trouwloon and Ine Apapoe. Danicke received a grant of € 2000 for the publication and dissemination of a zine titled Synthesizing Silences Between Wor(l)ds. Ine received a grant of € 8000 for her research on female leadership in Maroon societies in Suriname.

The aim of the fund is to financially support young Caribbean students or researchers with their research on Caribbean history or culture.

Grant | 16th Silvia de Groot Fund grant awarded to two winners 30-04-2026The 16th Silvia de Groot Fund research grant was awarded to Danick Trouwloon for her research on Curaçao and the wider Caribbean and Ine Apapoe for her research on Suriname. The aim of the fund is to financially support young Caribbean students or researchers with their research on Caribb...