Adrian Vickers
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avick.bsky.social
Adrian Vickers
@avick.bsky.social

Professor Emeritus. Historian and art historian, especially of Indonesia/Bali. DH, cricket, representation. Comments personal and not related to my university’s views. Projects include http://balipaintings.org/ and https://omaa-arts.sydney.edu.au/ .. more

Adrian Vickers is an Australian author, historian and professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney. He writes a blog on Indonesian subjects. He has studied and documented Gambuh dance traditions, Panji (prince) stories, and other Indonesian art and cultural subjects as well as historiography and colonialism. He has a BA and PhD from the University of Sydney, is the Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Director of the Asian Studies Program. Vickers' most recent book, The Pearl Frontier, co-written with Julia Martínez, won the University of Southern Queensland History Book Award at the 2016 Queensland Literary Awards. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. .. more

Political science 45%
Sociology 38%
Pinned
The Virtual Museum of Balinese Painting has undergone a major make-over. We're still fixing some things (like the bibliography link), but thanks to the Systemik team, I've been able to add a lot more: heurist-usyd.cloud.edu.au/heurist/?db=...
The Virtual Museum of Balinese Painting
Enter a concise description of the Heurist database / website here, which will be used eg. in lists of websites and in search engine discovery. Remember to indicate the institution and/or project, t...
heurist-usyd.cloud.edu.au

Meetings aren’t what they used to be: nobody moves motions, let alone amendments, and has a vote.

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

The Prabowo administration is going all-in on its 8% growth target, and it’s going to wreck investor confidence in sound economic governance to get there

www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...
Indonesia at 'point of no return' on big Prabowo growth bet, despite market carnage
Inside Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto's administration, officials are doubling down on his contentious growth and spending policies, despite recent moves from global financial agencies that sho...
www.reuters.com

If it’s by numbers, then why isn’t the author advocating teaching Indonesian, let alone Mandarin, Hindi, Bengali etc?

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Our @channelnewsasia.bsky.social #ThaiElection26 live blog is now online with all the latest results, reactions and ramifications. I will be at the ruling Bhumjaithai Party, where PM Anutin hopes to convert his tenure of 3 months in a new mandate of 4 years.
Polls close in Thailand with three main parties battling for power
An outright majority for any of the three main parties is unlikely, so an alliance is almost certain to be required to form a government.
www.channelnewsasia.com

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Lieve BS-vrienden, ik heb raad nodig. Ik zoek een EU alternatief voor WordPress. Tot hiertoe als ik een simpele site nodig had, bouwde ik die op WP zelf. Ik wil een site maken voor de podcast, maar graag EU. Ik zie bijv Combel? Iemand ervaring of ideeën? 🙌

european-alternatives.eu/alternative-...
European alternatives to WordPress.com | European Alternatives
WordPress.com is a WordPress hosting provider owned by Automattic, a US American company which contributes to the development of WordPress.
european-alternatives.eu

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Unsure how to read this scene.

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Thailand election stakes are high as progressives mount new challenge against establishment
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...
Before a single vote is cast, dark clouds gather over Thailand's progressives
As Thailand prepares to head to the polls, voters remain wary that in their version of democracy, the party they vote for is not always the one that takes power.
www.abc.net.au
me, librarian: I think information should be organized and structured logically so that searches are high in precision and recall

tech industry, 2000: nope, keyword searching and opaque relevance rankings are what you’ll get



tech industry, 2026: now you’ll just get fake hallucinatory text

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

#PramoedyaAnantaToer: 2025 Centenary Roundtable. As today is the Indonesian novelist, essayist & historian’s birthday, I share a video of Muhammad Alagil Chair event @nus_ari @NUSingapore: tinyurl.com/2wwnjwf2. Thank you Ismah, Karib & Taomo for collaborating
@arielheryanto.com @avick.bsky.social
Pramoedya Ananta Toer: Revisiting the Indonesian Author’s Work on the Centenary of His Birth
𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝘂𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗱 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗹 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗮 𝗔𝘀𝗶𝗮 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝗶𝗮 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘂𝘁𝗲, 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗲. 𝗔𝗕𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧 Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006) is considered one of the foremost Indonesian authors. He was a novelist, essayist, and historian whose body of work was marked by an inclusive and critical politics that went against the grain of nationalism in independent Indonesia. In the Buru Tetralogy, the author envisions an Indonesia that was constructed not only by those considered indigenous but the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Europeans and others who inhabited the nation. At the same time, his work places at the centre subaltern groups such as women and peasants. Pramoedya’s attention to cultural inclusivity and subaltern groups was a rare combination in Indonesia and, arguably, other newly independent nation-states across Asia and Africa. Pramoedya’s framing of an inclusive and critical nationalism has not been sufficiently highlighted and deserves further attention at this time because of the challenges to identity, belonging, social cohesion, and human security by new forms of exclusive nationalisms in a multi-polar world. From India to Israel, territorial claims along ethnic and religious lines have deepened—often with devastating outcomes—and draw on reified understandings of the past, as demonstrated by Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (Cambridge, 2021). Contested understandings of national histories are central to the contemporary crisis. On the occasion of the centenary of Pramoedya’s birth, this roundtable revisits our understandings of nation-states, keeping in mind the centrality of history. Adrian Vickers (Cambridge, 2013) observes that Pramoedya was “[o]ne of the few Indonesians with a coherent and developed vision of the nation’s history”. On the one hand, Pramoedya’s understanding of Indonesia is founded on the view that the nation-state is constituted by creole histories and anticipates the research and debate sparked by Arabia Asia and Inter-Asian Studies in the past two decades. On the other hand, as Vickers observes, Pramoedya’s hopes for a socially just and prosperous Indonesia remain a struggle. Taking these lines of thinking as cues, the roundtable explores the narratives and conceptual foundations of Pramoedya’s work and how they might be significant today. ────────────────── For more information, please visit: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/20250206-pramoedya-ananta-toer/
tinyurl.com

Nice to read about Jamie Mackie, who was always generous younger people in our field

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Late-stage Kapitalism

The same people elevating Farage are working to support One Nation in Australia
#ICYMI 😑
This is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of democracy on this side of the Atlantic, and I’m not being hyperbolic.

It’s deliberate, I’m sure

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Waitangi 2026. A government of Atlas Network slogans confronts a complex nation unwilling to be neoliberal roadkill. Toitū te Tiriti Toitū te Taiao

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

#ICYMI 😑
This is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of democracy on this side of the Atlantic, and I’m not being hyperbolic.

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Three more #kakapo nests found on Pukenui/Anchor Island yesterday. Here's Konini with her two eggs. We have found nests for 26 out of the 36 adult females on the island, with more to come in the next few days. It's a big year! #conservation #kakapo2026 A
today’s tech barons get compared to the robber barons (I’ve done it myself) but it’s notable how the current generation has responded to the philanthropic and cultural legacy of Carnegie et al with their own campaign of wanton destruction of cultural institutions

Buttie or Flyo would be the Oz nicknames
"Glencore asks Murray Watt to sacrifice koala habitat for coal mine" thepoint.com.au/news/260205-...
Glencore asks Murray Watt to sacrifice koala habitat for coal mine
Australia’s largest coal producer, Glencore, has applied to the Federal Government to extend its Hail Creek open cut coal mine, near Nebo in Central Queensland.
thepoint.com.au

Yes, learnt it at school (along with Stout Hearted Men and The Road to Mandalay). I remember a TV show that canvassed the alternatives when we were giving up God Save the Queen. Most had ‘girt’ somewhere.

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

It's because the other Southeast Asians with more online presence are jealous that Indonesians are, in terms of personal charisma, the coolest Southeast Asians, so we don't talk about them.

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

My latest piece on Mongabay:

“If only two dozen large corporations are responsible for landscape-scale forest degradation and deforestation, why should the State and Regional Budgets fund the rehabilitation of damaged landscapes?”

news.mongabay.com/2026/02/the-...
New Australia Institute research shows Australian high schools are the most expensive in the OECD.

"I can't see any policy case for taxpayers giving money to a school that can afford an air-conditioned equestrian arena."
@richarddenniss.bsky.social #auspol

You need a lot of nous for that job

Australian consultants — very familiar pattern

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

*Special meetings with top brass guests
*Lecture on 'no alternative'
*Recruitment freeze
*More topslice of income from centre
*'Restructure' and loss of department
*Talk of 'cross cutting synergies'
*'Lower recruiting' courses cut
*Course mergers
*Module choices cut
*Voluntary Severance (a) (2/4)

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

“Education is for the student’s benefit, not for the benefit of their future employer…students go to school not merely to acquire skills but to develop an entire social and intellectual life: to have something good and to have it forever”
@thepointmag.bsky.social

thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

Reposted by Adrian Vickers

Have a read of the recent article 'No Trace: ASIO and the End of the White Australia Policy' by Sean Brawley: doi.org/10.1080/0308...
No Trace: ASIO and the End of the White Australia Policy
This contribution to the special issue studies the history of the White Australia Policy through an exploration of the intersections between national security, immigration restriction and social re...
doi.org
Video shows people fleeing a severe storm as heavy rain and strong winds hit Mojokerto, a city in Indonesia’s East Java province.