Dirk Tomsa

Tell us about yourself!  

I am originally from Germany but have lived in Australia since 2002, when I came to complete a Master of Asian Studies degree in Melbourne. Instead of staying just for a year as initially planned, I continued with a PhD and then was lucky enough to start my academic career at the University of Tasmania. After three years in Tassie, I moved to La Trobe University, and I have mostly lived in Melbourne since then. When I’m not working, you’re most likely to find me either spending time with my family or watching or playing football (soccer). I’m also a keen birdwatcher and every time I visit Indonesia, I try to spend some time exploring new parts of the country looking for birds.

Where does your interest in Indonesia stem from?  

Indonesia barely featured in my undergrad political science degree in Germany, but I chose the fall of Suharto as a case study for my final thesis project on democratization. After graduating in 2000, I took on a part-time job at a think tank in Hamburg where I worked on a project about the history of German-Indonesian relations. It seemed as if the universe was trying to tell me something, so I finally visited Indonesia for the first time in 2001, started learning Indonesian, and then moved to Australia for postgraduate studies the following year. Most of the coursework subjects in my Master of Asian Studies degree focused on Indonesia and the supervisors for my minor thesis – Merle Ricklefs and Arief Budiman – encouraged me to do a PhD on Indonesian politics, even though neither of them had a background in political science. I followed their advice and never looked back.

What is the nature of your engagement with Indonesia – are you an academic, a professional, an alumni?  

I am an academic, currently working as an Associate Professor of Politics at La Trobe University in Melbourne. My research focuses on various aspects of Indonesian and comparative Southeast Asian politics, especially elections and political parties but also political activism and, more recently, environmental and climate change politics.

Have you ever been to an Indonesia Council Open Conference and if so, what is your fondest memory?  

Yes, I attended two conferences, though I must admit that it’s a long time ago. The most recent was in 2015 when I travelled all the way from a fellowship in Germany to Geelong to present a paper about the early months of the Jokowi presidency. That conference felt like a homecoming, not only because I lived overseas at the time, but also because I hadn’t seen many of my fellow Indonesianists for quite a while. Prior to that, I was also at the second-ever ICOC in 2003 in Canberra. Back then, I had only just started my PhD and I remember sharing a panel with two other PhD candidates working on similar topics as me. One of them was Bima Arya Sugiarto, who, as many IC members will know, is now the Indonesian Deputy Minister of Home Affairs.

How do you think organisations like Indonesia Council can improve Australia-Indonesia relations?  

First of all, organisations like the Indonesia Council play a crucial role in advocating for ‘Indonesia capability’ in Australia. Its submission to the recent parliamentary inquiry into building Asia Capability was a good example of this kind of advocacy. Second, the Council’s biannual conference provides an important forum for the exchange of ideas between Indonesian and Australian scholars and students. It can help build people-to-people ties between individual academics as well as institutional ties between universities and other organizations in the two countries. Third, it can support HDR students through travel bursaries to attend conferences other than the ICOC, for example the biannual conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA).