Departemen Sejarah, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), dengan bangga mengumumkan peluncuran situs web resmi program penelitian internasional bertajuk Exploring New Futures for Indonesian Objects: Dismantling Colonial Knowledge Production and Recovering Lost Histories and Memories, yang dapat diakses melalui laman https://pastfutureheritage.fib.ugm.ac.id/. Resmi diluncurkan pada 30 September 2025, website tersebut merupakan bagian dari riset kolaboratif antara Universitas Gadjah Mada dan University of Amsterdam (UvA), yang menjadi bagian dari program Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) bertema “Research into Collections with a Colonial Context”. read more

Batas akhir pendaftaran: 30 November 2025
Periode penelitian: 2026

Tentang Program

Program ini merupakan bagian dari penelitian payung bertajuk “Tracing evolutionary pathways in grassroots climate governance: Connecting the past, present, and future inter-scalar adaptation strategies in Southeast Asia – TRACE” yang berbasis di KITLV, Leiden, Belanda. Mengusung topik “Tracing irrigated agriculture in the Indonesian archipelago”, Departemen Sejarah Universitas Gadjah Mada sebagai mitra dalam program tersebut mengundang mahasiswa maupun alumnus yang tertarik untuk menelusuri pengetahuan tradisional yang terkait dengan pertanian beririgasi, terutama pertanian padi sawah di Jawa, Bali, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi dan pulau-pulau di Indonesia Timur. Jenis pengetahuan apa yang dilestarikan, bagaimana pengetahuan tersebut disimpan, dan bagaimana hubungan antara berbagai bentuk ontologi adalah pertanyaan-pertanyaan utama yang berusaha dikaji oleh penelitian ini. Program ini ingin mengkaji berbagai lapisan ingatan dan pengetahuan yang ada di antara masyarakat petani padi berbasis irigasi di nusantara. Lapisan-lapisan ini menunjukkan kemunculan dan keterikatannya dengan negara, termasuk kerajaan-kerajaan tradisional, kesultanan, negara kolonial Hindia Belanda, dan Republik Indonesia pascakemerdekaan. Melalui etnografi/sejarah lisan dan penelitian arsip, serta dengan menyediakan ruang bagi agensi petani/masyarakat, program ingin bekerja sama dengan masyarakat petani, kelompok-kelompok lingkungan, dan pemerintah untuk menelusuri pengetahuan yang telah diwariskan dari berbagai generasi mengenai pengetahuan ekologi yang terkait dengan penciptaan dan pemeliharaan pertanian beririgasi. read more

The Internal Kick-Off Meeting for the Re:Sound project, titled “Restituting, Reconnecting, Reimagining Sound Heritage,” held on 14 April 2025, marked the official launch of a multiyear, multi-institutional research initiative focused on critically engaging with colonial-era sound archives. Conducted in a hybrid format—both in person at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta and online via Zoom—the meeting gathered scholars, archivists, curators, students, and community-based practitioners from Indonesia, the Netherlands, and across Southeast Asia. Running from 2025 to 2028, Re:Sound seeks to rethink how sonic heritage is collected, curated, interpreted, and made accessible in the postcolonial present. read more

Restituting, Reconnecting, Reimagining Sound Heritage (Re:Sound)

Institutions : Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) and Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
Funding Body : The Dutch Research Council (NWO)
Application Deadline : 5 May 2025
Start Date : 1 August 2025
Duration : 3 years (full-time)

Project Overview

Re:Sound renegotiates Eurocentric understandings, conceptions and curations of “heritage”. This Eurocentrism obscures the coloniality of the history that “heritage” is supposed to narrate and obstructs the access of source community stakeholders to their own “heritage”. There is no scholarly or curatorial model to decenter European agencies and diversify understandings of heritage (curation). Re:Sound bridges this knowledge gap by focusing on sonic heritage, in particular two colonial sound collections from Indonesia, now located in the Netherlands, The Jaap Kunst Collection at the University of Amsterdam, and the Philips Holland Omroep-Hollandse Indies radio broadcasts at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NISV). read more

Following the launching of the research project on Lombok Heritage, the Department of History, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) hosted a public lecture titled “Beyond the Point of No Return: The Re-Emergence of Indonesian Debates and Concepts on the Return of Cultural Objects”. The public lecture was delivered by Dr. Sadiah Boonstra, a historian and curator, as well as the founder of CultureLab Consultancy. She is also one of the postdoctoral researchers within the Indonesia-Netherlands research consortium focused on the Lombok Heritage. read more

Image: Jaap Kunst’s Collection, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Olivier Middendorp.

We are delighted to announce that our collaborative research team at the Department of History, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and the Department of Musicology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) has been awarded a significant grant from the Royal Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the Research into Collections with a Colonial Context program to support our research project, Restituting, Reconnecting, and Reimagining Sound Heritage (Re:Sound). read more

Image: Sadiah Boonstra’s Public Lecture Materials (13 February 2025).

The research project “Exploring New Futures for Indonesian Objects: Dismantling Colonial Knowledge Production and Recovering Lost Histories and Memories” officially commenced on January 25, 2025. The project is a three-year program funded by the Royal Dutch Research Council (NWA), led by Professor Bambang Purwanto (History Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada) and Professor Ihab Saloul (Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory, and Material Culture, Universiteit van Amsterdam). This project convenes a distinguished consortium of experts and institutions both in the Netherlands and Indonesia, namely Universiteit van Amsterdam, Wereldmuseum, Rijksmuseum, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Indonesia. read more