Darmanto, Ph.D.

Area of Interest:

• Environmental History and Governmentality in South-east Asia
• Food and Food ways in Indo-Pacific
• Indigeneity and ethnicity in Indonesia
• Critical Development and Political Ecology of Global South

Education

• Ph.D. (2020)—The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (Faculty of Social and Behavioral Science, Leiden University, the Netherlands): doctoral thesis: Good to produce, good to share: Food, hunger, and social value (s) in a Contemporary Mentawai Society.
• M.Phil. (2016)—The Department of Asian Studies (Faculty or Arts and Social Science, Murdoch University, Australia)—master thesis: maintaining fluidity, demanding clarity: Contemporary Indigenous land relations on Siberut Island, Indonesia.
• B.Sc. (2005)—Faculty of Biology, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta: thesis: Ecological Study of Mentawaian Shifting Cultivation on Siberut Island, West Sumatra, Indonesia.

Academic Career

• Since June 2022, Research Fellow—Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Science
• 2020. Lecturer—Sociology and Development of Change, Wageningen University and Research. Course: Ethnography and qualitative methodology in social science
• 2016. Teaching assistant—The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology Leiden University. Course: Environment and Development in South-east Asia.
• 2014. Teaching assistant-- The Department of Asian Studies, Murdoch University, Australia. Course: Ecology and Society in Asia.

Other Activity 

Environmental anthropologist specialist, Sumatra Orangutans Society (2021-now)

Membership of Scientific Societies

• 2019-now—European Association of Southeast Asian Studies (EUROSEAS)
• 2021-now—American Anthropological Association (AAA)
• 2020-now—Australian Anthropological Society (AAS)
• 2016-Now—Asian Studies Association of Australian (ASAA)

Conference

• 2024. Ecological Anthropology Seminar 2024, the Department of Ecological Anthropology, Institute of Ethnology, 17 September 2024, Praha. Paper Presented: Crocodiles are Watching: The Water Spirit, Rampant Development, and Ecological Transformation on Siberut Island (Indonesia).  
• 2024. The Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Conference, Yogyakarta 9-12, July 2024. Paper presented: Economic Appearance and Agrarian Nightmare in the Mentawai Special Economic Zone.  
• 2024. Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI), Global Land Grabbing International Conference – 19-21 March 2024, Bogota, Colombia. Paper co-presented (online): Is It Just a “Project”? Indonesia Food Estate and Its Effect in North Sumatra.  
• 2024.Pluralizing the Value of Things Workshop 2 (Focus: Amazonia), Berlin, 3-5 June. Paper Presented: Value and Others: A Turnerian Perspective.  
• 2023. The International Conference on Government and Governmentality. The Institute of Village Development (Indonesia). Yogyakarta: 24 October. Paper presented: Environmental Governmentality in Indonesia Frontiers.  
• 2023. International Symposium on Wildlife Biodiversity Conservation, 4-5 September, Gadjah Mada University. Yogyakarta: 05, October. Paper presented: Contextualizing Social Safeguards for Protecting Biodiversity and Indigenous Voices. 
• 2023. The 16th International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) Conference, Brno, 7-10 June 2023. Paper presented: The Ancestors Are Watching: Crocodiles, Social Order and Environmental Transformation on Siberut Island, Indonesia. 
• 2023. The Global Lives of Orangutans Conference, Grassroots Political Responses to Agrarian Conflicts and Environmental Degradation in the Southeast Asian Anthropocene, Cambridge, 7-20 April, 2023. Paper presented: Beyond Failure Narratives: Contingent Articulations and Diversity of Actors’ Responses to Large Scale Provisioning Programme in Indonesia. 
• 2023. Finnish Anthropological Society, Rovaniemi, 21-25 March 2023. Paper presented: Whose Domesticated: Change and Continuity of Pigs-Human Relations in Siberut Island, Indonesia. 
• 2022. The 2012^th European Association of South-east Asian Studies (EUROSEAS), Paris, 27 June-1 July. Co-chair of Panel, Disaster and Dispossession in South-east Asia and beyond. Co-presenting paper: The bad, the ugly and the worst disaster on Mentawai Island.
• 2022. The 2012^th European Association of South-east Asian Studies (EUROSEAS), Paris, 27 June-1 July. Paper presented: Renegotiating extractive cosmology: Mentawaian animism, logging operation and the politic of redistribution on Siberut Island, Indonesia
• 2022. International Conference “Aquatic Powers: Divine Animals of the Asia-Pacific”, University of Oslo, June 1-3. Paper presented “Watching from Deep Water: Crocodiles, Social Order, and Environmental Transformation on Siberut Island”.
• 2021. The 11^th European Association of South-east Asian Studies (EUROSEAS). Olomouc, September, 7-9. Paper presented: Conflicted and Contradictory Resources Governance in the Making of an Indonesia Frontier.
• 2021. The Royal Antropological Institute, “Anthropology and Conservation Virtual Conference, 15-29 October. Paper presented: Transforming Forest, Producing Humans: Why the Indigenous Mentawaians Have Resisted Protected Area.
• 2021. The 11^th European Association of South-east Asian Studies (EUROSEAS). Olomouc, September, 7-9. Paper presented: Resisting the Oil Palm: Why Siberut has not been turned into an oil palm plantation.
• 2021. The 2^nd AIFIS conference on Indonesia Studies, Jakarta and Michigan, 16-20 June. The Chair of panel “Food, Foodways and the Culture of Relatedness in Indonesia”. Paper presented “Pig haters and pig lovers: Food and social difference among Mentawians and Minangkabau people.
• 2019. The 10^th European Association of South-east Asian Studies (EUROSEAS). Berlin, Germany, September, 11-13. Panel: Grounding “Alternative Ontologies”: Towards a Political Ecology of Animism. Paper presented ‘Egalitarian Turn: Animism, Extraction and Politic Ecology of Siberut Island Rain Forest, West Sumatra’.
• 2019. The 11 International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS). Leiden, July, 15-19. Paper presented, ‘Good to Produce: Food and the Construction of Persons among the Mentawaians in Siberut Island, West Sumatra.’
• 2019. The 8^th Nordic Geographers Meeting (NGM). Trondheim, Norway, 16-19, June. Paper presented ‘Cultivating Forest, Producing Food and the Practices of Sustainability in Siberut Island, West Sumatra.’
• 2016. The Southeast Asian Study Symposium “Human and Environmental Welfare in Southeast Asian”. Oxford, April, 13-16. Paper presented, ‘Maintaining Fluidity, Demanding Clarity: The Politic of Indigenous Land in Siberut Island, West Sumatra.’
• 2015. The 9^th International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS). Adelaide, July 5-9. Paper presented, ‘Indigenous Land Politic in Siberut Island, West Sumatra'.
• 2013. People's Movement against Neocolonialism and Imperialism, Social Movements for Alternative Asia Conference “The time is now for economic justice—End WTO week of action”. Bali, December, 1-6. Participant and volunteer.
• 2010. The CHATSEA conference “Agrarian Transition in Indonesia: Reformulating a Relevant Question and Its Answer”. Yogyakarta, June, 9-11. Paper presented, ‘Tuan Takur and Tuan Tekor in Siberut’s Cacao Boom and Bust’.

Grants and Scholarship

• 2024. The Czech Science Foundation. Project: Beyond Insecurity: Changing Indigenous People’s Foodways in Time of Climate Change in Indonesia, (GAČR 24-13058S). PI. 3,150,000 CZK. 
• 2024. Strategy-AV21. Workshop: Environmental Humanities for Resilience Societies in Ecological Unmaking, 48.000 CZK. 
• 2023. Land Deal Politic Initiative (LDPI) small grant, Erasmus University. Project: “Global Food Crises, Ethnic Politics, and Kinship-Based Agriculture: The Indonesian Food Estate and Local Responses in North Sumatra“(Co-PI). Euros 3,000. 
• 2023. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. “Pluralizing Value: Network of Anthropological Value Scholars in Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America“.  (Co-PI). Euros 16,000.
• 2023. Cambridge University Travel grant, The EU Project Global Lives of Orangutans/Cambridge University. Euros 1000. 
• 2023. Strategy-AV21. Research Project “Resilient Society in Time of Ecological Crises“.  Strategy-AV21, 118,000 CZK.  
• November 2021-April 2022. Young People and Just Transition in Southeast Asia Forest Scape British Academy and Australian National University (Euro 12,000)
• 2016-2020. Research on Food and Water in Asia and Africa, PhD Research Grant (Euro 80,000), Louwes Fund, The Netherlands
• 2015. Travel research grant, Australia Award Scholarship AUS 6,200