Indonesia Council Digest - March 2024
Thanks to those of you who have signed up as paid members of Indonesia Council – we appreciate your support so much! Your membership will help us to support emerging academics, advocate for Indonesian studies and offer exclusive membership benefits.
I’d also like to extend a particularly warm terima kasih to new Treasurer Elly Kent, who has been ironing our new membership processes at the same time as starting a big new job and going straight into a teaching semester. And somehow she also manages to reply to her emails in a timely manner – incredible!!
Wishing those who celebrate a blessed and peaceful holy month of Ramadan.
Please be in touch at any time: iclistdata@gmail.com
Natali
What’s happening
All the cool folks are signing up to become members of Indonesia Council – and you can too! Paid membership allows us to cover our modest operating costs and to support keynote speakers at the biennial ASAA conferences. It also provides added benefits for you, including eligibility for:
• Biennial Indonesia Council Early Career Book Prize
• Dedicated postgraduate events and workshops
• Special members-only newsletters
• Other events, activities and subsidies as suggested by you
The Sydney Southeast Asia Centre is hosting its annual Politics in Action forum on Thursday 9th May, on campus and streamed online through Facebook. Designed for an audience of scholars, students and the general public, the hot tip is that the in-person attendance is catered, so you can get a dose of politics as well as a bite to eat. This year, the Indonesia update will be delivered by outstanding ANU PhD candidate, Navhat (Nava) Nuraniyah. More info and register here.
Angie Bexley and Ele Williams have recently published this piece on partnering for success. This was written in the context of the broader KONEKSI initiative, which is Australia’s flagship research and innovation program in Indonesia. Angie and Ele interviewed Australian and Indonesian researchers (full disclosure – including me) to find out some top tips for getting research collaborations right in Indonesia, including investing in building strong relationships, establish clear goals and lines of communication, building flexibility into the research design and challenging power inequalities.
Ele’s also published a piece in response to the recent ASEAN Summit in Melbourne. Drawing on her PhD research, Ele calls for the government to put its money where its mouth is by investing in long-term, substantial funding so that Australians have the language and cultural tools to engage with our Southeast Asian friends and colleagues—including those in Indonesia. As she writes,
“In Australia today, only 11 tertiary institutions offer Indonesian language, and only five offer Vietnamese, despite the fact that Vietnamese is now the fourth most widely spoken language after English in Australian homes. Other Southeast Asian languages such as Cambodian, Javanese and Filipino have ‘entirely disappeared’ from Australian tertiary degrees altogether. How are Australian graduates to build better ties with our ASEAN neighbours if they hold no understanding of its languages or cultures?”
On a related topic is this article for The Conversation on the geopolitical risks of declining foreign language learning in Australia and New Zealand. Languages have taken a post-pandemic battering at universities, despite the outbreak of new wars and soaring geopolitical tensions. Billions of dollars are spent on military capabilities, defence and security, but, as authors Geoffrey Miller and Miriam Neigert write,
[I]t’s equally vital to support foreign language learning. Languages are an essential component of the diplomatic and intelligence toolkits. A decline in their teaching and learning has repercussions beyond university campuses. Disappointingly, scant attention was paid to languages in the recent Australian Universities Accord review of the higher education system. A rare exception was an observation that promoting Indonesian skills would help Australia to “engage better with our region” – a hint to policymakers about why languages are more than just a “nice to have.”
Asialink is running a webinar tomorrow, 21st March, on Indonesia’s Next President. Speakers include Director of the Asia Institute Prof Vedi Hadiz, Professor of International Relations at Gadjah Mada University Prof Poppy Sulistyaning Winanti and Indonesia Director at the Australia-Indonesia centre Kevin Evans. Asialink Senior Advisor Don Greenlees will moderate the conversation. You can register for free here.
You might also be interested in this webinar featuring Dr Barbara Andaya and Dr Leonard Andaya on the topic of “Fifty Years as Historians of Southeast Asia: Personal Perspectives” on Wednesday, 27 March 27 from 3:00pm Hawai‘i Standard Time:
“In the West there is a disturbing academic trend to question the value of history as a discipline and area studies more generally – a trend that has serious implications for the study of Southeast Asia, both past and present. Against this background, the future of Southeast Asian Studies, and specifically history, will be increasingly dependent on the contributions of Southeast Asian scholars, and they will establish research and teaching priorities for future generations.”
Lucky you if you’re able to make it in person, but for the rest of us the event will be live streamed on the UH Center for Southeast Asian Studies Facebook page and Youtube Channel.
Other cool stuff
Last month we shared news about the Murdoch University Indonesia PhD Scholarship, applications for which are open until 31 July 2024. There is also the Murdoch University Indo-Pacific PhD Scholarship, offered to an Australian scholar of exceptional talent to undertake doctoral research that will contribute to Australia’s knowledge of and partnership with countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Worth up to $115,000, this opportunity also closes at the end of July.
ABC’s Foreign Correspondent ran a fascinating story on the new Indonesian capital, Nusantara, the so-called city in a jungle. Catch up on “Moving a megacity” on YouTube. And, if that grabbed your interest, you might also be interested in this 2022 article on the incentives offered to investors to lure them to the new capital, including the right to build for 160 years.
Adam Bobbette, a political ecologist, spoke to the International Institute for Asian Studies’ podcast about his new book, The Pulse of the Earth, which was published in 2023 by Duke University Press and tells the story “of how modern theories of the earth emerged from the slopes of Indonesia’s volcanoes”. As IIAS says, “Adam’s work offers a unique and transdisciplinary view onto questions of science, imperialism, Indonesian cosmologies, and contemporary politics, all while introducing listeners to geologic features of the Javanese landscape.”
Finally, don’t miss the latest episode of Indonesia Unedited where Jane and Indra at UNE discuss the outcome of the 2024 Indonesian presidential election and its implications for the future of Indonesian politics. Catch it on YouTube.
Call for papers
Submissions for abstracts and panel proposals are now open for the 2024 LCNAU Eighth Biennial Colloquium. Hosted by the University of Sydney’s School of Languages and Cultures, the Languages and Cultures Network for Australian Universities (LCNAU) 2024 Colloquium will explore the theme ‘Trans/Formation: research and education in languages and cultures’. LCNAU invites scholars, practitioners, early career researchers and postgraduate students to submit abstracts and panel proposals on a wide range of interest areas. Submissions close on Sunday 31 March 2024, 11:45pm AEDT. Learn more here.
Publications
Lian Sinclair and Neil Coe published this excellent piece in ASPI’s The Strategist on critical minerals such as lithium and nickel, noting that Indonesia is the second largest producer of steel grade nickel products. Sinclair and Cor look at the implications for Australia’s geopolitical strategies of the critical mineral price crash in recent months.
Lian Sinclair has had a busy month, with another article, this time with Trissia Wijaya, that looks more closely at Indonesian nickel and the role it plays in powering electric vehicles. Read more in Inside Indonesia. The full research article that it is based on will be published in Environmental Politics.
In keeping with the nickel theme, this recent article by Yuli Z looks at the devastating impact of nickel mining on local farming communities in South Sulawesi; one look at the murky water flowing from the town pipes will have you concerned.