Application deadline: 30 November 2025
Research period: 2026

About the program

This program is part of a larger research entitled “Tracing evolutionary pathways in grassroots climate governance: Connecting the past, present, and future inter-scalar adaptation strategies in Southeast Asia – TRACE” based at KITLV and Leiden University, the Netherlands. The Department of History UGM as a partner of this research program invites university students and alumnus who are eager to trace traditional knowledges associated with irrigated agriculture, particularly with wet rice cultivation in Java, Bali, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi, and islands of Eastern Indonesia. What kinds of knowledge consulted, how they are stored, and how they relate between different ontological forms are the primary task of the tracing. This program intends to look into layers of memories and reposited knowledges amongst farming communities of irrigated rice agriculture in the archipelago. These layers point to its emergence and entanglements with states, including the traditional kingdoms, sultanates, Dutch Indies colonial state, and the post independence Republic of Indonesia. Through ethnographic/oral history and archival research and by providing a space for farmer/community agency, we intend to work together with farming communities, environmental groups, and the government in order to trace the knowledges that must have been passed down from various generations on the ecological knowledge related to the creation and maintenance of irrigated agriculture. read more

Hosted in Europe or Southeast Asian countries | 3 Fellowships | 2 months each
Application deadline: 31 December 2025
Fellowship period: Autumn 2026

The Restituting, Reconnecting, Reimagining Sound Heritage (Re:Sound) project invites applications for three short-term research fellowships aimed at scholars, curators, artists, and source community members from Southeast Asia. These fellowships seek to support original research and curatorial experimentation within two main sound collections in the Netherlands: The Jaap Kunst Collection at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) and The Philips Omroep-Hollandse Indies radio broadcasts at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NISV), or other repositories of source communities from Southeast Asia in Europe and repositories in Southeast Asia relevant to Re:Sound. 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