2025 Travel Grant Winners – AICEF

Traheka Erdyas Bimanatya​
American University
Economics

     Regional inequality stays a persistent problem in lots of middle-income international locations. While geography and issue endowments are sometimes emphasised, rising proof means that establishments and tradition additionally form uneven improvement outcomes. My dissertation examines how political establishments contribute to regional inequality in Indonesia. Using quantitative strategies, I discover three associated questions: How does the rise of political Islam in native parliaments have an effect on useful resource allocation? Does incumbent participation in native elections affect district-level labor market outcomes? And does historic publicity to ethno-religious violence proceed to form improvement outcomes at this time?

Herman Manoe
Emory University
New Testament Studies

     Existing scholarship on 1965 has largely emphasised macro-political tensions—such because the battle between the Western and Eastern blocs, or between Sukarno/ABRI and Suharto—and the way these culminated in mass killings, long-term trauma, and the fragmentation of households. My analysis shifts consideration to the micro-level dynamics of violence, analyzing how tensions, jealousy, and hostility amongst bizarre folks—neighbors, siblings, and native communities—additionally contributed to the escalation of violence. In this sense, the examine complicates the acquainted proverb “gajah dan gajah berkelahi, pelanduk mati di tengah” (when elephants struggle, the mousedeer dies within the center), by suggesting that even the “mousedeer” participated within the violence in opposition to each other. This perspective highlights the advanced and intersecting axes of energy that formed the tragedy. Through this analysis challenge, I goal to contribute to Indonesian academia by advancing interdisciplinary scholarship in my haunted postcolonial studying that bridges theology and biblical interpretation, historical past, and important concept. 

Suci Nazier
Ohio State University
Health and Rehabilitation Science

     The goal of this examine is to generate proof to enhance equitable, family-centered rehabilitation providers for youngsters with bodily disabilities brought on by cerebral palsy (CP). CP is very prevalent in Indonesia, which ranks among the many high 10 international locations worldwide within the variety of circumstances. The examine explores the lived experiences of caregivers in accessing rehabilitation providers for youngsters with CP in Indonesia. It builds on my prior revealed analysis on CP rehabilitation practices in Indonesia and can present context-specific proof to information service enchancment. The findings might also inform future analysis within the Pediatric Assessment and Rehabilitation Lab (PEARL Lab), the place I’m finishing my PhD coaching below the supervision of Dr. Jill Heathcock, to design and check context-specific therapeutic interventions for youngsters with CP and their households in Indonesia and different lower-middle-income international locations with related settings.

Diana Purwaningrum
University of Maryland
Teaching, Learning, Policy, Leadership

     Diana’s dissertation goals to worth the lived experiences and linguistic range of Indonesian undergraduate girls who skilled gender-based violence (GBV) and to discover their multimodal makings as mediums of self-expression, resistance, and therapeutic. Two analysis questions drive the inquiry of this examine: 1) How do Indonesian undergraduate language main girls who’ve skilled GBV language their experiences multilingually and multimodally? 2) How do casual gatherings that incorporate multilingual and multimodal makings create house for therapeutic and resistance with Indonesian undergraduate language main girls? Using a feminist multimodal essential discourse evaluation, this analysis interrogates unequal energy buildings that (re)produce GBV inside and past larger schooling establishments in Indonesia whereas centering the multilingual and multimodal practices of Indonesian undergraduate language main girls. It combines semi-structured interviews and ngumpul (casual gatherings) with a girls’s psychologist and activist who will share sources and construct solidarity with survivors of GBV. This dissertation analysis advances scholarly information of therapeutic and transformation amongst survivors of GBV and affords insights for extra inclusive larger schooling.

Leni Amelia Suek
Oklahoma State University
Curriculum Studies

     This examine explores the lived experiences of early profession English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academics as they transfer from college preparation into classroom educating in Indonesia. The analysis focuses on graduates of a trainer schooling program in a province that’s among the many poorest within the nation and has one of many lowest Human Development Index ranges. In areas like this, instructional challenges are sometimes extra seen, but analysis on trainer preparation and classroom realities stays restricted. Through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, the examine examines how academics understand their preparation and the way they navigate the calls for of faculty observe throughout their first years of educating. Although the examine is carried out by one trainer educator at a regional college, its impression can prolong far past the establishment. Insights from this analysis might affect how future academics are ready, shaping the practices of academics who will go on to show college students throughout many faculties in Indonesia. By specializing in an underrepresented area, the examine brings consideration to voices and experiences which can be usually neglected in nationwide discussions on schooling.

Mega Wulandari
The Ohio State University 
Multilingual Language Education/Teaching and Learning

     Mega’s analysis challenge investigates how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) trainer candidates (calon guru Bahasa Inggris) in Indonesia, combine GenAI into the event of digital multimodal tutorial supplies. The analysis is located inside a trainer preparation course centered on designing supplies tailor-made to college students’ particular wants. While Indonesia characterised by excessive digital adoption, it faces a major problem with low literacy charges (PISA, 2022). Consequently, this examine strikes past vieweing AI as a “shortcut,” as a substitute reframing it as a collaborative instrument to boost pedagogical high quality. By using AI to streamline the creation of digital worksheets, movies, and presentation slides, the examine explores how the trainer candidate can use GenAI critically and ethically by implementing pedagogical reasoning of the AI output into their multimodal artifacts. It additionally addresses the problem of trainer candidate attrition from the occupation. Data assortment consists of interview, the qualitative evaluation of student-created artifacts, educating demonstration and AI interplay logs that doc contributors’ pedagogical choice making. The goal of this analysis is to exhibit how AI may be leveraged to enhance tutorial requirements whereas preserving trainer cognition within the Indonesian context.

Muhammad Ikbal Putera
North Carolina State University
Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management

     Muhammad Ikbal Putera is a Fulbright doctoral scholar in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University below the supervision of Dr. Yu-Fai Leung. Since February 2015, he has labored as a park ranger at Komodo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the place he at present serves as a Senior Forest Ecosystems Specialist below the Ministry of Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia. In this position, he helps Komodo dragon conservation, tourism coverage, and customer administration. His doctoral analysis explores pathways to youth stewardship in protected areas, utilizing Komodo National Park as the first case examine.  Through this analysis, Ikbal goals to reconnect younger folks with nature whereas fostering stronger consciousness of, and dedication to, conservation. His work bridges educational inquiry and field-based observe, drawing on greater than a decade of expertise in one among Indonesia’s most globally important protected areas. After finishing his doctoral diploma, he aspires to return to Indonesia and contribute to stronger nationwide park governance, with the long-term purpose of serving in management roles, together with as Superintendent of Komodo National Park and, ultimately, Director General of Natural Resources Conservation and Ecosystem Management inside the Ministry of Forestry.

Yana Karisma​
Ohio State University
Multilingual Language Education

     Yana’s dissertation is positioned as a pioneering examine analyzing the intersection of generative synthetic intelligence (GenAI), translanguaging, and indigenous language preservation in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), Indonesia. Recognizing the area’s linguistic superdiversity, his analysis challenges conventional, deficit-based “English-only” insurance policies. These inflexible frameworks usually fail to view a scholar’s mom tongue as a helpful cognitive asset for buying English. In response, this examine conceptualizes GenAI not merely as a passive machine translation instrument however as an interactive translanguaging associate. ​Furthermore, this analysis goals to decolonize English language educating. It supplies empirical proof on how AI-mediated translanguaging empowers multilingual college students from rural and semi-urban backgrounds to adapt world applied sciences whereas confidently asserting their authorial voices and cultural identities.

Eva Mushoffa
Ohio State University
Political Science

     Eva’s challenge investigates how leaders’ personalism influences democratic backsliding on the provincial stage, drawing insights from Indonesia, the biggest democracy in Southeast Asia. The examine proposes that personalist leaders—who depend on clientelist networks and governing coalitions—contribute to a decline in democratic high quality, mirrored in weaker legislative oversight and lowered electoral accountability. To check this argument, the analysis combines a number of strategies, together with an professional survey, evaluation of governors’ CVs and media-based biographies throughout 31 provinces since 1999, panel information regression, and qualitative comparative case research. The examine will likely be complemented with a qualitative most-similar comparative case examine to discover deeper causal explanations on why personalist leaders stay dominant within the selective circumstances. 

Pratama Pradheksa
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Science and Technology Studies

     In Indonesia, the time period mangkrak can imply one thing like “neglected,” “abandoned,” “left idle,” “incomplete,” or “stalled.” Recently, a number of stakeholders have utilized mangkrak to characterize “incomplete” infrastructure, such because the waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerator in Sunter, Jakarta (Sunter ITF). The WTE incinerator is meant to resolve two issues: waste administration and vitality technology. However, the Sunter ITF has clearly misplaced momentum previous to operation – it’s mangkrak. This dissertation analysis investigates the complexity of Jakarta’s formidable Sunter ITF. The analysis will not be solely centered on the Sunter ITF. It additionally examines community-led “Zero Waste” initiatives in city areas like Bandung and Surakarta, which present how these communities have challenged WTE incinerators whereas concurrently growing their very own different waste administration programs that incorporate multispecies infrastructures. The AICEF Travel Grant will assist the remaining part of the dissertation challenge’s ethnographic fieldwork in Jakarta, Bandung, and Surakarta

Krisharyanto Umbu Deta
University of California Santa Barbara
Religious Studies

    Umbu’s analysis examines how Marapu folks in Sumba have interaction with—and disengage from—the state and Christianity in a variety of ways in which have reshaped the configuration of indigeneity, faith, and the state. Investigating this spectrum of (dis)engagements, his analysis goals to point out how the dominant frameworks are neither utterly renounced nor homogeneously internalized, however strategically engaged and thus reconfigured in folks’s lived realities, difficult the submission-subversion dichotomy. The spectrum ranges from these actively concerned in articulating and institutionalizing Marapu inside the dominant frameworks of faith and institutional mechanisms of the nation-state to those that stay detached and fewer engaged in such advocacy. His ethnographic strategies embrace participant statement and interviews with Marapu folks and organizations, Marapu faculty academics, authorities officers, civil society and spiritual organizations, together with church buildings, and native students, in addition to evaluation of organizational and authorities paperwork. His analysis will contribute to rethinking and increasing the methodological approaches and theoretical registers pertaining to the relationships amongst faith, the state, and indigeneity, in addition to the broader downside of social motion and resistance in opposition to the established order. It can even inform multi-sectoral efforts of students, authorities, civil society, and indigenous communities themselves in advancing indigenous legal-political and social-cultural rights and recognition in Sumba and past.

Alfath Satria Negara Syaban
The University of Alabama
Geography

     This analysis examines Indonesia’s relocation of its nationwide capital from Jakarta to Nusantara (IKN) in East Kalimantan as a possible mannequin for addressing multidimensional conflicts associated to social inequality, financial disparity, political governance, and environmental sustainability. Using a mixed-methods strategy that mixes stakeholder interviews, surveys, spatial evaluation, and coverage assessment, the examine evaluates how capital relocation might contribute to extra balanced nationwide improvement and inclusive governance. The challenge additionally goals to offer sensible suggestions for clear land administration, stakeholder engagement, and sustainable city planning that may assist future large-scale improvement initiatives in Indonesia.​

Mufdil Tuhri
Emory University
Religion/Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Religions

     This fieldwork challenge examines how Muslim bureaucrats in Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs translate the state agenda of “religious moderation” into on a regular basis administrative and social observe. Based in Kerinci District, Sumatra, the challenge follows how non secular moderation strikes from nationwide coverage frameworks into native Ministry workplaces, sub-district Religious Affairs Offices, and village communities. Through fifteen months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, I’ll examine how Muslim civil servants perceive and enact non secular moderation of their bureaucratic routines, public service, group engagement, and ethical duties. This fieldwork will contribute to broader anthropological debates on Islam, the state, non secular governance, and forms

Adelide Asriati Sekar Rianda
Texas A&M University
Marine and Coastal Environmental Science

     Adelide’s dissertation examines coastal groundwater dynamics and their position in solute and contaminant transport throughout estuarine and concrete programs, with a specific concentrate on coastal groundwater discharge, seawater intrusion, and groundwater high quality in weak coastal environments. Her analysis investigates how urbanization, groundwater extraction, land subsidence, and hydrological processes affect groundwater and floor water interactions, nutrient transport, and contaminant migration in coastal aquifers and estuaries. By integrating area observations, geochemical analyses, and numerical modeling, the examine goals to enhance understanding of coastal aquifer conduct and the environmental impacts of groundwater-derived solutes on estuarine and marine ecosystems. The dissertation locations sturdy emphasis on Indonesia’s quickly urbanizing coastal areas, notably Jakarta, the place extreme land subsidence and seawater intrusion threaten groundwater sources and water high quality. Through comparative and process-based analyses, her analysis seeks to assist sustainable groundwater administration, enhance understanding of coastal environmental degradation, and supply scientific insights that may inform environmental coverage and water useful resource administration in Indonesia’s coastal cities.