2023 Indonesia Council Open Conference
Hosted by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre at the University of Sydney together with Western Sydney University, the two-day conference featured over 320 papers across diverse themes and disciplines. ICOC 2023 brought together hundreds of academics and postgraduate researchers from across disciplines with an interest in Indonesia.
Convened by SSEAC Director Professor Michele Ford, Western Sydney University academic Associate Professor Zulfan Tadjoeddin and Indonesia Council President Dr Natali Pearson, the 2023 theme was ‘Indonesia 25 Years On’.
In 2023, Indonesia marked a quarter-century since the resignation of President Suharto in May 1998 and the start of the reform era. But what does it mean to be Indonesian today? To answer this question and share their reflections, the conference opened with a plenary featuring three emerging scholars: Dr Annisa Beta (University of Melbourne), Ms Kestity Pringgoharjono (University of Technology Sydney) and Dr Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan (École française d’Extrême-Orient).
Conference disciplinary champions from Australian and international universities were integral to taking ICOC 2023 beyond traditional area studies, putting together many of the excellent open discussion panels that followed, held in person and online.
More than 300 speakers shared their research on Indonesia spanning topics as diverse as agrarian change, health and wellbeing, cities and urban living, identity, pedagogy and education, social movements, gender and sexuality, and arts and culture.
Three roundtables elicited engaging discussions including on kwir (queer) theory in Indonesia, the 2024 elections and Indonesia’s democratic trajectory, and a session chaired by KONESKI on Australia– Indonesia research partnerships and the role of policy entrepreneurs in Indonesian think tanks.
PhD candidates Yunie Rahmat (University of Sydney) and Umi Pujiyanti (Western Sydney University), together with Dr Pearson, facilitated a popular postgraduate workshop on networking for academia. The workshop explored the benefits of participating in networking events and provided participants with practical skills on how to plan, create and maintain their academic networks.
Other highlights included a food and cultural tour of western Sydney, an on-campus screening of the film Autobiography, and seven book launches.
“The ICOC is proudly free and open to scholars, students and community members,” Dr Pearson said. “It’s particularly gratifying to hear of the positive experience of early-career researchers presenting papers for the first time, a testament to the ICOC’s spirit of inclusion for anyone interested in engaging with cutting-edge research on Indonesia.”
To view the program and download the book of abstracts, visit the ICOC 2023 website here.
