There’s a notorious stretch of road in Indonesia, by the border of North Sumatra and Aceh provinces, that passes through kilometres and kilometres of oil palm plantations. There are few people there, ...

Several insightful analyses of Joko Widodo’s approach to the presidency have been advanced since he took office. For the most part, these have focused on his overriding preoccupation with domestic ...

Editor’s note: this article is based on the author’s Political Update paper presented at the 2023 ANU Indonesia Update Conference, the full version of which appears in the December 2023 edition of the ...

Are Indonesia’s political parties all alike? Are some more in favour of political reform than others? Do some favour business interests while others see themselves as siding with the poor? And does it ...

Observers in the West have largely interpreted the devastating violence that has engulfed Myanmar following the February 2021 military coup as a “battle between democracy and authoritarianism”. This ...

The motivations behind these reforms—the renewed emphasis on language learning, a desire to see more Australian students up in the Indo-Pacific for longer duration experiences, and a rebalancing of ...

In the aftermath of Jakarta’s 2017 gubernatorial election, it seemed that Indonesia’s Islamists would be more solid than ever in their support for Prabowo Subianto’s challenge to Joko Widodo (Jokowi) ...

Versi Bahasa Indonesia bisa dibaca disini. Conflict, disappointment and fear have followed the opening of the major quinquennial art exhibition Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany on 18 June, as ...

More than 70% of the population in Indonesia live within 100km of one or more of the country’s 130 active volcanoes—that’s a staggering 175 million people. 8.6 million Indonesians live within 10km of ...

Indonesia’s 2019 presidential election is currently operating under a peculiar paradox. On the one hand, there seems little to distinguish the presidential candidates on policy platforms. Opposition ...

In the last few weeks, over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a bloody pogrom in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, crossing into Bangladesh. Among the horrified and largely moralistic reactions in the West, ...

During visits to pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) in Java and Sumatra, President Joko Widodo’s (Jokowi) running mate Ma’ruf Amin conveyed that metaphor many times in his speeches. “Pak Jokowi is ...