Experts Profile

Organisation:

Researcher
Organisation: CSEAS


Biography

Ratna is a researcher at Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Indonesia. She studied at State Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta and University of Indonesia in International Affairs and Social Development. She did some trainings and joined many fora related to building her leadership and analytical skills in Southeast and East Asia. She is selected as participants of “ASEAN Youth Leadership Camp” in Universiti Utara Malaysia and participants of “BIMP-EAGA Youth Forum” in Brunei Darussalam. She joined the Center in 2013 as junior researcher, then appointed as Research Manager in 2016 until now. She has passion in research and academic discourses especially related to international issues and development area. Her research interests is on human security and broad spectrum of development topics in Southeast Asia with special focus on social protection and welfare related issues. She is involved in the latest research project in CSEAS namely “Human Rights and Labour Migration across ASEAN” which was conducted in 6 countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar and Indonesia in 2017 with the funding from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The other research she is involved in is “The perception of Indonesian migrant workers in Hongkong on the implementation of employment social security by BPJS Ketenagakerjaaan” (Funded by BPJS Ketenagakerjaan/ Social Security Agency for Employment in Indonesia) in 2018. She is one of editorial team of CSEAS Policy Brief Series, a bimonthly publication providing policy analyses and views from policy makers in Southeast Asia.


Researcher
Organisation: SMERU

Areas of Expertise:
  • Village Governance and Community Empowerment Study (Sentinel Villages)
  • Child Poverty and Disparities in Urban Area


Biography

As a researcher, I am determined to be able to help to overcome problems of mankind. In so doing, one has to elaborate its complexity in clear and contextual ways. Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago with hundreds of million people from 1,340 tribes— each with their local wisdoms and languages living in 17.508 islands. Indonesia comprises of more than 98 cities and 78,609 villages. The problems it faces are therefore complex. However, this gives researchers in Indonesia the opportunities to produce knowledge and contribute to the civilization.

My passion in research has been growing ever since I was a student at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. I studied urban and regional planning for my Undergraduate and Master programs. My interests in making observations, engaging in discussions, and expressing my thoughts in a blog-site have helped me connect with people sharing similar concerns. During my studies, I made some contribution to the discourse of urban and regional issues, such as participating in conferences/seminars, publishing papers, working as a teaching assistant, and established PETARUNG, which stands for Pemuda Tata Ruang, a youth community for urban planning.

In 2014, I joined the National Development Planning Agency of Indonesia (BAPPENAS) and was involved in a project to develop the 2015–2019 Mid-Term National Development Planning. At that time, I witnessed how the formulation of public policy is still not evidence-based. I believe that there should be a network of people who assist them in developing policy. One year later I decided to join the SMERU Research Institute which has a vision of contributing to the making of evidence-based and pro-poor policies. Not long after, together with two co-authors, I published a book titled Kota Rumah Manusia (The City: Home for Humans).

Being a researcher has given ample opportunities to improve professionally. My research interest has broadened, from urban and regional studies to the issues of poverty, human development, and public policy. Currently, I am involved in two projects, namely the Urban Child Poverty and Disparities and Village Law Implementation. SMERU also supports my capacity building by sending me to national and international events.

In 2016, I was invited by KITLV to a workshop on “New Law, New Villages? Changing rural Indonesia” in the Netherlands. I presented a paper titled The Birth of Village Law: Where are the Marginalized Groups? In addition, I also presented a paper titled Capability Approach in Re-Imagining and Re-Producing Space: Case of Community-Based Citywide Slum Upgrading in Yogyakarta at the 2016 Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) Annual Conference in Tokyo, Japan. In a nutshell, I am deeply passionate about my life as a researcher!


Researcher
Organisation: SMERU

Areas of Expertise:
  • Opinion Leader Assessments on Infant and Young Children Feeding in Indonesia
  • Research Into Individual Family Development Sessions to Support Transitioning PKH Families
  • Early Childhood Development (ECD) Strategy Study
  • Evaluating the Socioeconomic Impacts of the Tamadera Program: Baseline Study


Biography

I am a researcher at the SMERU Research Institute, Jakarta, Indonesia. I pursued my master’s degree in Development Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. I began to develop an interest in research during my undergraduate studies, when I took part in various academic writing competitions. After successfully winning some of the competitions, I found my passion in research. For me, doing research is not only about generating deeper understanding and new knowledge, but since different research studies have different challenges, doing research has also positively affected my creative thinking, analytical skills, and the way to see a problem.

My area of research interest is development issues. My research path and interest is largely influenced by The SMERU Research Institute’s research area. Being a researcher who has been involved in poverty, education, and health studies conducted by the institute, I found that Indonesia is a country with many development problems and complicated root causes. Since then, I have committed myself to engagement to solve the problems facing Indonesia’s development.

My current research projects are on health: the barriers to optimal infant and young child feeding (IYCF) in Indonesia, and the implication of the ASEAN Economic Community on Health Services in Indonesia. Both research projects enable me to engage with many influential development institutions in Indonesia, including ministries, NGOs, health worker associations, and international organizations. The engagement is not only developed for data collection purposes, but also for policy engagement objectives. For the IYCF project, for instance, I have engaged with ministries, NGOs, and international organizations through the IYCF policy change forum. In the forum, I am involved in formulating Indonesia’s policy strategies for improving IYCF practices, and I actively disseminate research findings to the forum.


Researcher
Organisation: ANU

Areas of Expertise:
  • Migrant worker protection and rights norms
  • Human trafficking


Biography

Ruji is completing his doctoral studies at the Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University (ANU). HisPhD thesis examines the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) policy on migrant worker rights protection. It traces the emergence of migrant worker rights norms and looks at the socialization process in Southeast Asia. In particular, it seeks to explain the divergence of national policies despite the convergence at the regional level. This study moves beyond the debate between ASEAN skeptics and ASEAN boosters that centres on the impact of the ASEAN Way norms such as non-interference and consensus-based decision-making. It further contributes to the current constructivist literature on norms, which interrogates scope conditions for divergence in socialization. As such, his PhD project sheds a new light on the diverging policy implementation that points out the limited explanatory power of the “traditional” analysis based on the ASEAN Way. Ruji is currently an Asia Studies Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington, DC where he is conducting a pilot project investigating US-ASEAN cooperation on human trafficking. This study investigates regional cooperation on anti-trafficking, based on the “3P” framework – prosecution, protection and prevention. It closely examines the role of the US government in creating policies for anti-labour trafficking, especially among migrant workers in Southeast Asia. This project is supported by the EastWest Center and partially funded by the ASEASUK Research and Impact Award from the Association of Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom. From October 2017, Ruji will be a Visiting Doctoral Fellow based at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS), University of Bamberg, Germany. He has published an article assessing ASEAN cooperation on migrant workers rights protection in Global Change, Peace & Security. He has also contributed to shaping public perception on human trafficking policies in Southeast Asia in New Mandala. He previously was a Visiting Researcher at the ASEAN Studies Centre, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore and Centre for Strategic and Security Studies (CSIS), Jakarta, Indonesia.


Research Officer
Organisation: RCSS

Areas of Expertise:
  • Contemporary continental philosophy
  • Subaltern politics
  • Historiography
  • Problem of representations and political subjectivization


Biography

Samal Vimukthi Hemachandra has an MA in Political Science from Central European University, Budapest, an MA in Philosophy and Contemporary Critical Theory from Kingston University, London and a BA in History from University of Colombo, Colombo. He previously worked as a Consultant at INFORM Human Rights Documentation Center, Colombo. His research/academic interests extend to contemporary continental philosophy, subaltern politics, historiography, problem of representations and political subjectivization.


Research Assistant
Organisation: BIPSS

Areas of Expertise:
  • Gender Studies
  • Climate Change
  • Migration
  • Security issues
  • Regional Matters in Bangladesh


Biography

Saraf Wasima is a Research Assistant at the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS), where she manages projects involving international collaborations on critical topics like climate change and security, security studies, and contemporary global challenges. She holds both a master’s and bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Bangladesh University of Professionals. Her research spans diverse areas including gender studies, climate change, migration, security issues, and regional matters in Bangladesh, particularly those related to the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Rohingya Crisis. She has a strong record of academic publications, having contributed three articles to internationally peer-reviewed journals, with her most recent publication appearing in a Scopus-indexed Q1 journal by Taylor and Francis. Her earlier work was also published in Scopus Q2 journals by the Taylor and Francis. Additionally, she has contributed several insightful commentaries to BIPSS, covering topics such as disinformation, cyber warfare, and issues affecting both Bangladesh and global security landscapes. Her master’s thesis on gender-related issues in non-traditional security reflects her commitment to exploring security from a gendered lens, adding a critical dimension to her research portfolio. Her work not only broadens the scope of traditional security studies but also emphasises the human and social factors integral to comprehensive security analysis. For research collaborations, her expertise aligns well with other NTS-Asia members, particularly in areas such as climate change adaptation, gender and security, migration studies, and disinformation in the digital age. Her focus on interdisciplinary and globally relevant topics makes her a valuable collaborator for addressing shared challenges and advancing innovative approaches within the NTS-Asia research community. She is open to collaborative research opportunities with other NTS-Asia members, embracing various aspects of non-traditional security and contemporary international issues.


Deputy Director, Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP)
Organisation: WISCOMP


Biography

Seema Kakran is Deputy Director, Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), an initiative of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility. Seema is trained as a political scientist with a specialization in political theory, public policy and international relations. She has eclectic research interests from gender, conflict and post conflict peacebuilding to equity and inclusion in education from a sociological perspective. Among her recent publications are: Navigating the Terrain of Gender Justice: A Handbook for Gender Audits at Higher Education Institutes in India (co-authored with Meenakshi Gopinath and Shilpi Shabdita); South Asian Perspectives on Sustainable Development and Gender Equality (co-edited with Mallika Joseph and Meenakshi Gopinath); ‘Gendered Power Transformations in India’s Northeast: Peace Politics in Nagaland’, Cultural Dynamics, 2017, Vol. 29(1-2) 63-82 (with Rita Manchanda); Educating for Social Change: A National Workshop, New Delhi: WISCOMP, 2016 (with Nidhi Bhatnagar); Medium is the Message: Together Against the Violence of Gendered Exclusion, New Delhi: WISCOMP, 2016. Seema serves on the editorial board of Peace Prints: A South Asian Journal of Peacebuilding.


Program Officer at Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP)
Organisation: WISCOMP


Biography

Shilpi Shabdita is Program Officer at Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), where she handles programs on Conflict Transformation, Gender Justice and Education for Peace. She has a Masters’ degree in International Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame, USA, and a PostGraduate Diploma in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding from Lady Shri Ram College, India. Previously, she worked at Heartland Alliance, USA on migration issues, and with Afghans REFLECTIONS Afghanistan in Transition Meenakshi Gopinath & Shilpi Shabdita A year after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, the country rapidly recedes from the global spotlight with the war in Ukraine dominating the discourse on foreign policy and monopolising international media attention. Afghanistan continues to be mired in an escalating human rights and humanitarian crisis, with ‘gender apartheid,’ media censorship, ‘ethnic genocide,’ economic collapse, and armed resistance defining the volatile status quo. It is the only country without a constitution, without legal recourse to rights and access to secondary and university education for women. As part of the ‘Afghanistan in Transition’ series, WISCOMP’s publications foreground the unique insights of Afghan policymakers, civil society leaders, former diplomats, media persons, and academics on the key developments in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Post the takeover, for the first time, a generation of Afghans are taking the lead in shaping the narrative instead of relying solely on global analyses; engaging with the root causes of the protracted conflict across diverse internal fault lines of gender, ethnicity, tribe, religion among others; and deconstructing the ideology of the Taliban. Despite repeated assertions of its commitment to upholding women’s rights under Sharia, the Taliban’s decrees have institutionalised women’s erasure from public life in Afghanistan. Since August 2021, over 40 decrees have been passed denying for Progressive Thinking, Afghanistan on project design and grant writing for youthled dialogue initiatives. Shilpi has also worked in Uganda at the Justice and Reconciliation Project, where she collated a ‘Community Memory Book’ documenting war memories and justice needs of over 280 former combatants and survivors of war; participated in campaigns for families of disappeared persons; and authored USAID analysis reports on regional reconciliation. Previously, Shilpi served as a Consultant at WISCOMP working on the ‘Education for Peace’ initiative with youth leaders and educators from New Delhi and Kashmir, which focused on inter-regional dialogue, conflict transformation skill building, and collaborative peace projects.