Diana Suhardiman is director of KITLV and professor of Natural Resource Governance, Climate and Equity (by special appointment) at Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University. In this role she will further strengthen the research programme on climate governance, studying how climate adaptation is entangled with every day’s livelihoods and linked with processes of agrarian change and globalization, while contributing to decolonizing climate debates and climate justice. 

Her research looks at natural resource governance and development with particular focus on equity and inclusion. Putting power and politics central in the contemporary struggles of natural resource governance, she looks at power dynamics and power relationships that influence and determine the overall shaping of governance structures, processes, and outcomes across scales (local to transboundary). Placing her research at the intersection of land, water, and environmental governance, she studies power struggles and grassroots alliances shaping within the broader context of state transformation processes in various countries in Southeast Asia, including Laos, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. 

Suhardiman studied Tropical Land Use at Wageningen University (1998) and obtained her PhD in Social Science from the same university (2008). She has won several research grants, led various research programs, and served as a member of the editorial boards of Agriculture and Human Values and International Journal of Water Resources Development, scholarly committees, both in the Netherlands and globally. Between 2016-2021, she was Research Group Lead Governance and Inclusion at the International Water Management Institute, based in Vientiane, Laos, where she also worked as post-doctoral fellow and later (senior) researcher since 2008. 

She is the author of more than 75 publications, mostly journal articles, book chapters and monographs on the politics of exclusion, processes of contestation and institutional emergence, and transboundary water governance in Southeast Asia. 

Selected Publications

Suhardiman, Diana & Miles Kenney-Lazar and Glen Hunt, ‘The spatial politics of land policy reform in Myanmar and Laos’, Journal of Peasant Studies 50-4, pp. 1529-1548, 2023.  

Suhardiman, Diana & Anna Phayouphorn, Anthony Gueguen, Jonathan Rigg, ‘Silent transition: Commercialization and changing customary land tenure systems in upland Laos’, Land Use Policy 126, 2023. 

Suhardiman, Diana & Jonas Kramp, ‘(Un)making the upland: Resettlement, rubber and land use planning in Namai village, Laos’, Journal of Peasant Studies 49-1, pp. 78-100, 2022.  

Suhardiman, Diana, Natalia Scurrah, ‘Institutional bricolage and the (re)shaping of communal land tenure arrangements: Two contrasting cases in upland and lowland Northeastern Laos’, World Development 147, 2021.   

Suhardiman, Diana & Natalia Scurrah, ‘Farmer’s agency and institutional bricolage in land use plan implementation in upland Laos’, Land Use Policy 104, 2021.  

Suhardiman, Diana &Jonathan Rigg, ‘Aspirations undone: Hydropower and the (re)shaping of livelihood pathways in Northern Laos’, Agriculture and Human Values 38-4, pp. 963-969, 2021.  

Suhardiman, Diana, Ayemyaing Nawaye & Natalia Scurrah, ‘Scalar politics, power struggles and institutional emergence in Daw Lar Lake, Myanmar’, Journal of Rural Studies 87, pp. 32-44, 2021.  

Suhardiman, Diana, Jessica DiCarlo, Oulavanh Keovilignavong, Jonathan Rigg & Alan Nicol, ‘(Re)constructing state power and livelihoods through the Laos-China Railway project’, Geoforum 124, pp. 79-88, 2021.  

Suhardiman, Diana, Saw John Bright & Casper Palmano, ‘The politics of legal pluralism in the shaping of spatial power in Myanmar’s land governance’, Journal of Peasant Studies 48-2, pp. 411-435, 2021. 

Suhardiman, Diana, Jonathan Rigg, Marcel Bandur, Melissa Marschke, Michelle Miller, Noudsavanh Pheuangsavanh, Mayvong Sayatham & David Taylor, ‘On the coattails of globalization: COVID-19, migrants and migration in Asia’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47-1, pp. 88-109, 2021.