EUC Global Connection – Indonesia
The Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change brings together geographers, physical scientists, social scientists, humanities researchers and artists whose innovative research seeks to advance sustainability and social justice. Using field-based science, policy analysis, critical social theory, planning skills, geomatics, and cultural and arts-based approaches, our researchers drive action to address the world’s environmental and urban challenges.
EUC researchers are engaged in collaborative relationships, projects and partnerships with colleagues and institutions around the world. Here are the works we have been doing in Indonesia.
EUC Main Researchers in Indonesia
EUC Main Partner Institutions in Indonesia
EUC Research in Indonesia
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world (after China, India, and the United States) and the largest country in Southeast Asia by both land area and population. There have been substantial collaborations involving EUC researchers since the 1980s.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) participated in major Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)-funded international partnership projects in Kenya and Indonesia. Led by Edward (Ted) Spence, EUC Professors such as Gerald Carruthers, Bill Found, Rob MacDonald, Rodger Schwass and Paul Wilkinson were active participants in the CIDA’s Indonesian project. A resource room was dedicated to the project. It was equipped with files, books and Indonesian items and supported by a staff member, and Professor Jennifer Foster was appointed to liaise with Indonesian visitors during her time as an MES student.[i] The project also brought many Indonesian students, especially from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), to the MES program. One of them was Dr. Teti Argo who came in 1991 under CIDA’s University Consortium on the Environment.[ii] Dr. Argo, who is now a professor at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Policy at ITB, completed her MES in 1993 under the co-supervision of Professors Ted Spence and Paul Wilkinson.
Moving forward, EUC professors have produced important scholarship on Indonesia. The contributions of Professors Peter Vandergeest and Glen Norcliffe (among others) are admired inside and outside the Indonesian studies community. Professor Vandergeest’s work on political ecology has set a research agenda for doctoral studies on Indonesia, as exemplified by recent PhDs in Geography, including Arianto Sangaji (2021) and Wendy Alejandra Medina de Loera (2025). Professor Norcliffe’s work on the mobility of persons with disability includes strong collaboration with scholars from Brawijaya University in Malang, Indonesia.
Abidin Kusno’s program of research has largely focused on Jakarta, and has included numerous exchanges of knowledge in the form of research collaborations, lectures, and workshops with scholars in Jakarta and other Indonesian cities (photo 1-2). Kusno’s books include Jakarta: The City of a Thousand Dimensions (National University of Singapore Press, 2023); Visual Cultures of the Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016); After the New Order: Space, Politics and Jakarta (Hawaii University Press, 2013); and Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2010).
In 2018, Professor Manneke Budiman from the University of Indonesia came to York as a YCAR Research Collaboration Fellow to work with Professor Kusno.[iii] Kusno continues to serve on committees and editorial boards for journals and books dedicated to the study of Indonesian history, culture, politics. The most recent one includes the Springer book series titled Engaging Indonesia: Critical Dialogues on Culture and Society.[iv]
More recently, EUC researchers have participated in events related to Indonesia, such as the 2021 Knowledge Garden Festival curated by renowned Jakarta-based art collective Gudskul, when the collective served as the Art Gallery of Yok University’s 2019-20 artist-in-residence.[v] Participants in the event include Professor Lisa Myers and Environmental Studies PhD student Marsya Maharani, who is now conducting doctoral research on the Jakarta art collective.
EUC, via YCAR, also participated in York’s first Climate Change Research Month in 2022, featuring environmental scholars and activists working in Indonesia. The panel, Thinking Like an Archipelago: Design and Spatial Practice for Climate Change Adaptation in Indonesia, included speakers such as Professor Teti Argo (noted above), and Geography PhD student Ria Jhoanna Ducusin (as discussant). [vi]
More broadly, EUC has contributed to bridging Indonesia and Canada through Indonesian diaspora networks. In 2022, the Indonesian diaspora in Toronto, led by Professor Teti Argo, organized a workshop tracing collective memories through Indonesian traditional music.[vii] This event, in celebration of the 70th anniversary of Canada-Indonesia relations, was supported by YCAR and the Indonesian Consulate General in Toronto.
The ties between EUC and Indonesia have been built through continuous shared research interests, knowledge mobilization, pedagogical exchanges, and most importantly, social interactions, and they remain strong to this day.
[i] Thanks to Jenny Foster for the info
[ii] Teti Argo identified several Indonesian scholars as well as MES students under the CIDA program.
[iii] The collaborative project with Prof. Budiman and his research team has been published in an edited volume titled Collective Memory, Marginality and Spatial Politics in Urban Indonesia https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-97-4304-9
[iv] The Book series is called Engaging Indonesia https://www.springer.com/series/17331/editors
[v] https://thegoldfarbgallery.ca/project/the-knowledge-garden/
[vi] https://www.yorku.ca/research/ycar/2022/03/14/ycar-participation-in-climate-change-research-month/
[vii] https://www.yorku.ca/research/ycar/2022/08/29/echo-from-the-archipelago/#:~:text=The%20Echo%20from%20the%20Archipelago,to%20trace%20a%20collective%20memory
