Call for Abstracts - The 6th Annual AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies
“Making Knowledge, Making History: Producing the Indonesian Past, Present and Future”
AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies 2026
May 26 – 30, 2026 (Virtual) The American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) and Michigan State University (MSU) Asian Studies Center will convene the 6th annual AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies from May 26-30, 2026. Presented in a bilingual and virtual format, the conference is designed to bring together scholars working across geographic and disciplinary frameworks to explore the evolving field of area studies research in Indonesia.
This year’s conference theme, “Making Knowledge, Making History: Producing the Indonesian Past, Present and Future,” invites scholars, students, artists, and practitioners to explore how Indonesia has been imagined, studied, and narrated across time. Knowledge and history are never neutral–they are made, remade, and contested through the shifting dynamics of power, place, and perspective. We seek to open a space for critical reflection on how diverse disciplines of studying Indonesia have been constructed: by whom, for whom, and to what ends. From colonial archives to digital media, from indigenous epistemologies to regional and global scholarship, the production of knowledge about Indonesia reveals enduring tensions between authority and agency, memory and forgetting, locality and universality. How have academic disciplines, state institutions, and communities contributed to the shaping of Indonesia’s intellectual landscapes? How might alternative ways of knowing—oral traditions, government databases, visual cultures, statistical analyses, performative practices, activist archives, or legal discourse—challenge established narratives and foreshadow new futures
We welcome papers and presentations from across disciplines and subjects, including but not limited to:
History, psychology, anthropology, and sociology
Environmental studies, geography, disaster management
Literature, linguistics, language learning, and cultural studies
Business, economic analysis, and legal studies
Education, pedagogy, public health and welfare studies
Labor and migration
Energy, science and technology
Religious studies and philosophy
Art, media, and performance studies
Policy analysis and political science, and regional studies [including ASEAN]
Family, gender and sexuality
Museum, heritage, indigenous, and archival studies
Proposals for panels and presentations engaging with this theme or on any other theme focusing on Indonesia and its place in the world are welcomed. Abstracts are accepted in Indonesian and English.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF PAPER PRESENTATIONS:
FEBRUARY 8, 2026 - 11:19PM ET
DEADLINE FOR ORGANIZED PANEL, ROUNDTABLE AND BOOK TALKS:
MARCH 22, 2026 - 11:59PM ET
Selection Guidelines:
Proposals are welcomed from scholars across the entire field of Indonesian Studies, regardless of their academic affiliation, with particular encouragement for those from academic communities that are underrepresented in international forums. One of the key goals of the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesia is to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and scholarly exchanges that transcend the typical boundaries of academic networks. Indonesian and English bilingualism is welcomed across the conference, and panel and roundtable submissions with diverse participation in terms of gender, academic rank, national origin, and disciplinary approach are strongly encouraged.
Learn more at the MSU Asian Studies Center partner site, or contact us at conference@aifis.org or asiansc@msu.edu
Source: https://www.aifis.org/conference-on-indonesian-studies
