Chair
Jemma Purdey joined the IRIP board in 2007 after a stint as guest editor a few years earlier. Her interest in Indonesia came via her passion for human rights causes beginning in the early 1990s and an interest in knowing more about our near neighbours. Jemma has spent extended periods of time travelling, studying and researching in Indonesia. She wrote a PhD on anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia during the last years of the New Order and after reformasi and she is author of From Vienna to Yogyakarta: The life of Herb Feith, UNSW Press, Sydney 2011. Until his sudden death in 2001, Herb Feith was one of Inside Indonesia’s earliest supporters. Jemma is a co-host of the Talking Indonesia podcast, Director of ReelOzInd! Australia Indonesia Short Film Festival and an adjunct Fellow at the Australia-Indonesia Centre and Deakin University.
Treasurer
Anton Lucas is Treasurer of the IRIP Board. He arrived in Yogyakarta from the University of Hawaii 's East West Center in late 1969 on an Indonesian language semester study programme and it changed his life forever. He wrote a PhD on the independence struggle of 1945 on Java's north coast, and has since taught in Indonesia , in Makassar (1984-85), and in Yogya (1990-92). After Inside Indonesia started in the mid-1980s, he signed up his wife Kadar's extended Yogya family and a Catholic nunnery in Central Java as subscribers. Kadar's family were interrogated by intelligence officers, and the nuns were accused of spreading banned Marxist teachings. Indonesia has changed a lot since then, but the magazine maintains its commitment to social justice, and what is happening at the grass roots level in the largest Muslim country in the world which is Australia 's closest neighbour. Anton taught Asian Studies and Indonesian at Flinders University for many years, and has a particular research interest in agrarian and environmental issues.
Secretary
Tito Ambyo grew up in Bandung, where he wrote plays, poems and punk songs (he was a member of at least three punk bands) and failed a year of high school. He came home from school one day to find out that Soeharto was no longer president; that confused him enough that he started asking questions that led to his first article as a journalist, and since then he has worked in East Timor, Indonesia and Australia and his articles have been published by magazines and newspapers such as Visual Arts Magazine and The Guardian. Tito moved to Australia at the beginning of the millennium and has worked as a reporter, producer and executive producer in his seven-year stint with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is now an Associate Lecturer in Journalism at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, teaching online and broadcast journalism.
Other Members
Gerry van Klinken and his partner Helene became avid readers of Inside Indonesia when they were living in Salatiga, Central Java in the late 1980s. After both submitting pieces and being thrilled when they were published, Gerry found himself editing the magazine in 1996. After moving to a guest editor system in 2002 he continued to be actively involved in the magazine, first as coordinating editor, and later as a member of the editing committee. He is now a researcher in the Netherlands. Gerry is continually struck by the infectious energy that Indonesia inspires in those who return from their travels. He sees that energy as a sustaining force for the magazine. Helene and Gerry's own memories of Indonesia include high adventure, back-packing around the archipelago and being shipwrecked at night on a coral reef in a traditional sailing boat! They both want the magazine to be a 'bridge between people, to challenge stereotypes, to highlight movements and individuals who we think symbolise a better tomorrow'.
Yatun Sastramidjaja has been a huge fan of Inside Indonesia since she was an anthropology student at the University of Amsterdam in the 1990s, and so she was delighted to join the editorial team in 2010. Born and raised in the Netherlands, she spent three childhood years in Bandung, after which she has returned to Indonesia almost every year for family visits and later for research. Yatun's research in Indonesia spans a range of topics, from youth cultures, to student movements, heritage and memory cultures, and most recently digitised protest, policing and political manipulation. She is deeply concerned with human rights issues, and constantly amazed by people's resilience and creativity in claiming their rights. Currently Yatun is an assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and an associate fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
Vannessa Hearman was born in Indonesia and is a historian of Southeast Asia who lectures in history and international relations at Curtin University in Western Australia. Her research deals with the 1965-66 anti-communist violence in Indonesia, the politics of memory and human rights, and East Timorese diaspora and migration. She is the author of Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia (Singapore: NUS Press, 2018) which was awarded the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s inaugural Early Career Book Prize in 2020. She is a certified professional Indonesian interpreter and translator. Before entering academia, Vannessa worked in the aid and development sector and as interpreter and translator in Australia and Timor-Leste. Reading Inside Indonesia taught her much about the politics of the country she left behind as a child, including the contentious issue of East Timor. Access to the magazine encouraged her to maintain her links with Indonesia and to become actively involved in campaigns in Australia supporting the Indonesian pro-democracy movement in the 1990s.