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

Building a Community-Based History Conscious Heritage

Department of History, Universitas Gadjah Mada
5-10 August 2024

About the Summer School

The return of heritage objects from the Netherlands to Indonesia over the past few years has raised major questions about the meaning of heritage objects in society. There is no doubt that museums are foreign institutions for Indonesians and that museums are only visited by school children who are required to attend. Why is tangible heritage and its institutions such as museums often perceived as alien and distant from the community? Critics of cultural heritage scholars suggest that one of the main reasons for the distance and alienation of heritage stored in museums lies in the inherent nature of museums as colonial institutions. Museums and the production of knowledge about heritage that emerged alongside colonialism and the formation of sciences such as archaeology and linguistics are based on Western ontologies that therefore contain and replicate the epistemic violence of Western colonialism. read more

Memoryscapes of children’s education in faith-based institutions in Indonesia (1890-1980)

Workshop & Summer School
5 – 14 August 2024
7th Floor Soegondo Building, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada
Jalan Nusantara 1 Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta 55281 INDONESIA

Introduction

This workshop and summer school program examines the scope, spread and development of faith‐based child separation in (post-)colonial Indonesia (1890‐1980). It investigates policies and practices of institutional education of children separate from their parents, kin and community. Such policies and practices underpinned structural cultural and social assimilation of children into ‘governable subjects’. Their education is to be a considered a linch pin of colonial governance. This Summer School introduces the concept of child separation and aims to integrate voices and perspectives of separated children and their kin. Life stories of individual children integrate structural historical analysis and personal sources. read more

About the Summer School

As a continuation of the summer school on the environment that has been held successfully for several years at the Department of History, UGM, this year’s summer school raises the theme of human ecology in facing the challenges of creating new environmental governance for the 21st century. Referring back to the capitalocene critique of the problems of environmental governance shaped by capitalism in the 20th and 21st centuries, this summer school aims to explore the ontological forms of environmental governance outside of capitalist extractivism and state modernization. Here, we will explore and recall stories and knowledge that have long been held in the collective cultural memory of Indonesians – and imagine forms of ecological nationhood and citizenship rooted in local traditions and understandings. read more

On Wednesday, February 22, 2023, the History Department of Universitas Gadjah Mada held its first departmental discussion event. The speaker of the discussion was Dr. Ahmad Athoillah with a research entitled “The Role of Sayid Saqqaf Al-Jufri and Modern Islamic Education in Arab Society in Kedu in the Early 20th Century.”

This research focuses on the roles and interactions of Sayid Saqqaf Al-Jufri in developing the modernization of Islamic education in the Kedu region in the early 20th century through the Al-Iman school that was established in Magelang. The results of this study show that Sayid Saqqaf was one of the Hadrami Arab Islamic education reformers who built a trans-local network of Islamic education modernism which was supported by Hadrami Arab kinship, Muslim intellectuals, and trade activities. Some of the themes explored during the discussion were the Islamic education systems in the early 20th century and the development of Islamic modernism during the same period. read more

On January 25, 2023, a public lecture entitled Critically Reviewing the History of the Indonesian Women’s Movement was held. This public lecture was a collaborative event between the Department of History of Universitas Gadjah Mada and Ruang Arsip dan Sejarah Perempuan (RUAS). The event invited Prof. Dr. Saskia E. Wieringa, professor of history, gender studies and same sex cross culturally at Universiteit van Amsterdam, and Ita Fatia Nadia as the moderator.

This public lecture departed from her book entitled The Destruction of the Women’s Movement in Indonesia, published by Kalyanamitra, Garba Budaya, in 1999. In this public lecture, Prof. Wieringa discussed the history of gender in Indonesia, especially in the pre-Islamic period, how the New Order politicized gender for its interests, and several theories that underlie her book, namely: 1) passionate aesthetics, 2) symbolic subversion, and 3) postcolonial amnesia. read more