In recent decades, a more radical Islam has been on the rise in Indonesia, but the government now promotes a moderate form of Islam. In his inaugural lecture, Professor Nico Kaptein will analyse the dynamics of Islam and the influence of the Middle East in this the largest Muslim country in the world.…

Questions of justice are not only the concern of legal professionals, politicians and activists, they also permeate culture at large. Literature, Cinema, Music and Artworks often revolve around questions about rights, justice and fairness, raising a wide range of issues, such as: how do we understand…

Literature, Language, and Multiculturalism in Scandinavia and the Low Countries presents a ground-breaking comparative approach to the study of multicultural literature.

The skin has recently gained attention within body studies for its many specific cultural and social associations, in addition to its biology. This project aims to examine the different layers of meaning and the functions invested in the skin in ancient Greece: how did ancient Greek literary and medical…

Are you thinking about studying Literature and Society. Europe and Beyond? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Mr. Ade Jaya Suryani defended his thesis on 28 January 2021

In times of hardships or crisis, local people know how to deal with it using their resourcefulness. Although efforts are sometimes made by the government to help them, they are fully aware that community support is at least equally important.

Late June EP Nuffic awarded a capacity building project in the field of Transnational Law, Asset Recovery and International Investment Arbitration at the Faculty of Law at Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta. The successful consortium brings together experts from VU University Amsterdam, Leiden University…

This study has been carried out in the community of Sukamiskin, a kelurahan (‘village’) in Bandung, the Capital of West Java Province, located in the Sunda Region of Indonesia.

New research has confirmed that the Dutch military used systematic, extreme violence against Indonesians. In his book Soldaat in Indonesië (Soldier in Indonesia), to be released at the end of October, historian Gert Oostindie draws the same conclusions using different sources. He presents new findings…

The Indonesian Experience after the Fall of Suharto

From April 27 to 29 April, the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance & Society in collaboration with the Law Faculty, the Gender Studies Graduate Program and the Center for Women and Gender Studies at Universitas Indonesia will organize a Research Sharing and Academic Writing Workshop on 'Child…

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

The 2014 Village Law will likely cause a considerable change in the character of village governance and leadership in the coming years.

The programme focuses on the medieval dynamics of intellectual life in the Rhineland and the Low countries, nowadays divided over five countries (Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) but one cultural region in the later Middle Ages.

Beauty is a central concept in the Italian cultural imagination throughout its history and in virtually all its manifestations. It particularly permeates the domains that have governed the construction of Italian identity: literature and language.

Land conflicts between farmers and government authorities or large plantation businesses are an everyday occurrence in many countries in the Global South. The same is true for Indonesia where thousands of land conflicts have been going on for years without a solution being found. In these types of conflicts,…

In late medieval and early modern times, books, as well as the people who produced and read (or listened to) them, moved between regions, social circles, and languages with relative ease. Yet, in the multilingual Low Countries, francophone literature was both internationally mobile and firmly rooted…

Four years of protracted negotiations and bitter warfare passed between the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August, 1945, and the official transfer of sovereignty on 27 December, 1949.

The climate crisis, the return of TB and the digitisation of cultural heritage. The Netherlands and Indonesia face many of the same challenges. A visit by a delegation from Leiden University to Indonesia at the end of June highlighted the benefits of cooperation.

Reconfigurations of Practice, Community and Authority in Contemporary Aceh

Neo-Baroque construction and deconstruction of the concepts of paradise in fiction.

New edited volume by Mies Grijns (VVI), Hoko Horii (KITLV/VVI), Sulistyowati Irianto (Universitas Indonesia) and Pinky Saptandari (Airlangga University).

More than half of the Indonesian population lives in cities. What does this mean for public health? How sustainable are these megacities? This is the subject of the ‘Urban Transitions’ Summer Academy on West Java. This summer course is also the kick-off for a renewed interdisciplinary partnership…

A lively discussion on impact and society

A delegation from Leiden University recently embarked on a knowledge mission to various NGOs, universities and government organisations in Indonesia. New partnerships were formed and important knowledge exchanged, and researchers from Leiden gave guest lectures.

A lively discussion on impact and society.

Dutch troops, judges and politicians collectively condoned and concealed the systematic use of extreme violence during the Indonesian War of Independence. Historians have now shown how this could happen. ‘It was scandal management rather than prevention,’ says Leiden historian and research leader Gert…

The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations to the Global North in general and Europe in particular have produced numerous images and narratives that try to record and convey these events and their actors.

From as early as classical antiquity there has been an interplay between literature and medicine.

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will head a delegation that is visiting Indonesia at the end of June. The visit is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘Leiden’ institute KITLV-Jakarta. What does this institute do and why is Indonesia important to the University?

The different kinds of cultural perspectives on health and disease of the participants are related to their knowledge, beliefs, values and practices manifested in various forms of lifestyle in Indonesia. The cultural diversity of the population is also related to differences in health behaviour.

In this article, the authors summarise the literature on the effects of multilevel governance on governments’ policy responses to Covid-19.

The first of the two volumes of this co-authored study has just been published by Metzler. The study explores the history of the concept ‘barbarism’ from the 18th century to the present and illuminates its foundational role in modern European and Western identity.

A new book about Villa Isola in Indonesia reveals some of the shared history of the Netherlands and Indonesia. The book was presented on Thursday to Annetje Ottow, President of the Executive Board, and Mr Mayerfas, ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia in the Netherlands.

In this article, Samuels focuses on the active fostering of subjunctivity in processes of narrative worldmaking. Drawing extensively from the narrative of an HIV‐positive woman in Indonesia, she shows that by subjunctively leaving open multiple narrative trajectories and future possibilities, individuals…

The Cinematic Santri explores the rise and course over the last ten years of cinematic practices among a younger generation of NU associates (Nahdlatul Ulama), the largest traditionalist Muslim group in Indonesia and elsewhere.

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh, C.J.M. Musters

How does speculative literature respond to or incorporate the aural, sonic, or noisy? How are sonic technologies co-opted into practices of worldbuilding? How does the speculative mode of artistic and literary enquiry generate new possibilities of listening?

This month, the volume Reading Russian Literature, 1980-2024, edited by Otto Boele and Dorine Schellens, was published at Palgrave Macmillan.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressing question is how this global health emergency impacted the research agendas of the field of crisis and disaster science. This article reviewed contributions in ten important crisis and disaster journals in the two and a half years following the COVID-19…

The Indonesia-Netherlands Security and Rule of Law Update will take place on Wednesday January 17 and Thursday January 18, 2018, in Jakarta and consists of a one-day public symposium and networking opportunity for a larger audience and one day of a series of twelve substantive panel-workshops in smaller…