Call for Proposals – Yale Conference on Indonesia
“Ways of Water: Drains, Viscosities, Leaks, Overflows, and Bursts in Indonesia”
Saturday, April 18, 2026 | 8:00 AM – 5:00 PMSince the principle of Tanah Air was introduced during the nascent nationalist movement in the 1920s, Indonesia has bound its identity to the unity of its waters as the world’s largest archipelago. In this framework, water is understood not merely as a resource or a basis for territorial claims, but as a medium of belonging and even, drawing from adat customs, a vessel for belief. In spite of these ideals, views of water as an archipelagic media that privileges mobility and connection have been contested by recent social and political developments. As the climate crisis escalates, floods and landslides are erasing homes, submerging kampungs, and displacing thousands, leading to shortages in food and clean water. Urban groundwater extraction continues to sink Indonesian cities, rerouting drinking water from poor neighborhoods to satiate the ever-growing needs of urbanization and industrialization. New critical mineral plants and data centers require vast volumes of water for processing and cooling. During last year’s mass demonstrations, high-pressure water cannons were often used to break and disperse protestors; meanwhile, images of anime pirates were held aloft as symbols of resistance. Indonesia’s unquenchable thirst for water indicates a profound metabolic challenge to the local lifeways surrounding aquifers, rivers, and oceans that continue to hold on to a sense of cultural and ecological continuity. In these developments, the politics of water becomes a litmus test to examine emergent forms of governmentality, as well as practices of ordinary struggle and extraordinary resistance. All these ways of water speak to the affective layers of survival, endurance, and rupture in Indonesia.
We call on scholars, scholar-artists, activists, policymakers, and other interested parties to present on issues germane to Indonesia as it relates to the provocation above at our in-person conference on Saturday, April 18, 2026. We invite proposals that speak to the multiplicity of liquid states in Indonesia, water and other fluidities in their absence, arrested motions, and viscous becomings, moving beyond a conception of “flow” that often overdetermines archipelagic existence. We seek perspectives that leak across methodological and disciplinary boundaries. How do communities maintain the sanctity of water as a home, when it is increasingly commodified for industrial and technological ends? In what ways does water persist as a vessel for cultural memory, acting as a conduit for healing or a site of spiritual tradition? How does the water act as a site of resistance? How do the various ways of water reflect the ordinary mood of day-to-day survival in Indonesia within a fraught world order? In what ways do people continue to endure? What could we learn from the last year’s protests and how do other forms of resistance transpire? We welcome interdisciplinary submissions that investigate the complexities of water as an agent that heals, destroys, remembers, and renews.
We invite those interested in presenting at Yale to submit a proposal by 11:59 p.m. EST on Saturday, February 21st, 2026. The proposal should be limited to 500 words (excluding references) and must include:
A description of your project/research and relevant theoretical frameworks
Methods, data sources/objects/materials
Substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments
Significance of your project/research
List of references for the works appear in the proposal
Paper presentation and demonstration/performance format are welcomed. We encourage all scholars/policymakers/activists from a range of fields, including those undertaking study (graduate students) to submit. Please send your proposal to conferenceatyale@gmail.com. In your email body, please include: your full name (and co-presenters, if any), institutional affiliations and department, status/position (e.g. professor, post-doc, graduate and what year, etc.), email address, phone number (including the area/country code), and title of the presentation/demonstration/performance. The conference committee will provide accommodation (1 night) for selected presenters. Notifications of acceptance will be sent via email by February 28th, 2026.
