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

On Tuesday, February 4, 2025, a historical discussion was held in Room 709, 7th Floor, Soegondo Building, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University. The event took place from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM WIB and was attended by various academics and historical researchers, both from Indonesia and abroad, including research colleagues from the Netherlands who were on a journey retracing history following World War II in Indonesia.

The discussion was officially opened by Dr. Abdul Wahid, M.A., Head of the Department of History, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, UGM. In his opening remarks, he emphasized the importance of historical studies based on academic collaboration between Indonesia and the Netherlands to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the decolonization period and its impact on both nations. read more