On Tuesday 3 March 2020 the book presentation of The Politics of Heritage in Indonesia: A Cultural History will take place at Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden. The book, written by Marieke Bloembergen (KITLV) and Martijn Eickhoff (NIOD) is the result of the project Sites, Bodies and Stories: The Dynamics of Heritage Formation in Colonial and Postcolonial Indonesia and the Netherlands, funded by NWO.

This class examines the history of charismatic megafauna and ‘religious economies’ of the early modern and modern Indian Ocean. It begins by discussing early modern and modern animal economies, paying attention to economic, political and religious developments and the circulation of animals, healers, trainers, mahouts, animal spirits and spirit mediums.

In the aftermath of separatist wars, why do some peace agreements succeed while others fail? The existing literature focuses on incentive problems, proposing that they can be solved with external guarantors or the emergence of winning internal coalition

This paper aims to clarify and define the distinctive characteristics of Islam and Sufism in the Indian Ocean through focusing on an oft-neglected Islamic port city, Singapore, in one of the most important eras of Indian Ocean connectivity

In August 2019, Indonesia witnessed the largest street protests since the fall of President Suharto in 1998. Thousands of Indonesians, many of them students, took to the streets to protest against corruption, growing authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

In the recent international campaigns against child marriage, there is a puzzle of agency: while international human rights institutions celebrate when girls exercise their agency not to marry, they do not recognize their agency to marry.

Is populism a harbinger of fascism, or simply the people talking back to the establishment? Today’s worldwide debate about populism resonated in Indonesia during recent presidential elections

In the study of post-conflict transitions, a leading question has been how former soldiers and non-state combatants can ‘return to society’. Former combatants have often played key roles in the political developments of their respective societies, and in cases of renewed conflict frequently were key players.