Seminar | Turning research into action: Rethinking land governance in Indonesia | Willem van der Muur

This seminar explores how academic research can influence policy, with a focus on land governance in Indonesia. It highlights the impact of research at Leiden University on the World Bank’s $653 million Indonesia – Integrated Land Administration and Spatial Planning (ILASP) project, which integrates flexible approaches to registering customary and indigenous land. As the Bank’s largest ever land initiative, ILASP aims to strengthen tenure security, protect ecosystems, and align land administration with spatial planning.

The seminar will critically examine the opportunities and challenges of linking research to practice in addressing Indonesia’s complex land governance issues.

Speaker

Willem van der Muur is a Land Tenure Specialist at the World Bank’s Urban, Resilience and Land Global Practice. He is currently based at the World Bank Country Office in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he works on land and geospatial projects in the East Asia-Pacific and South Asia region. His key expertise areas and current engagements include customary land tenure, community engagement, and property valuation. Willem received his PhD in Law and Governance from Leiden University. He also holds master’s degrees in international law and social sciences from the University of Amsterdam. His PhD research focused on Indigenous Peoples, assessing the trajectories and outcomes of community efforts to secure collective land rights. For this study he conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural areas in Indonesia. Before joining the bank, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher studying palm oil disputes.

More information will follow soon.