IIAS, a one-of-a-kind institute

IIAS is one of the last remaining leading institutes of Asian studies globally, promoting high-quality, creative interdisciplinary research on Asia. It encourages reflective, innovative scholarship in a collegial, close-knit community of Asia scholars, from philologists to political scientists. Throughout my career as an early-career scholar working across three continents (North America, East/Southeast Asia, and Europe), I can confirm that this unique feature of IIAS is not merely lip service but a lived reality for many fellows of the Institute, including myself. For these reasons, not to mention its global reputation and collaboration record, those of us in academia and other related stakeholders should continue supporting IIAS.

My own encounter and trajectory with IIAS are not just personal stories; they are something that resonates with the experience of many others. I first learned about IIAS from its popular academic publication, The Newsletter, as an undergraduate student, and since then, I have followed the Institute’s work closely. From April 2023 to January 2024, I joined the Institute as one of its many research fellows. This reflects the experience of many other friends and colleagues—they “bumped into” or heard of IIAS at some point in their careers and benefited from its excellent research environment and initiatives.

Let me mention several top-notch research infrastructures of the Institute: its fellowship program, joint conferences with academic and civil society partners in the Global South, book series with Amsterdam University Press, podcasts, regular talks, masterclasses, and The Newsletter—all coming from a small building in a small university town in a small country. Given its small size, this is indeed a major achievement for IIAS, something that is difficult to match even for bigger institutions with more funding.

These achievements, combined with its agility and flexibility as a research-focused institute, make IIAS outstanding globally. This is a milestone not only for Dutch and Western academia but also for Asian Studies and Asia-focused/Asia-based social science and humanities research. At a time when there is less state funding and declining public appreciation for humanistic disciplines and Asia as a strategic region, the existence of IIAS is more needed than ever.

On a more personal level, IIAS has facilitated my research progress and career trajectory beyond my expectations. Thanks to IIAS, I have secured two prestigious Europe-based fellowships—the Global Forum Fellowship hosted at CEU Democracy Institute and the Trapezio MSCA Seal of Excellence Fellowship hosted at the University of Turin, funded by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo—which allow me to continue working as a scholar and conducting research on conservatism and democracy in Indonesia, a timely topic both intellectually and socially relevant. That IIAS has become a great launching pad for many early-career Asianists of my cohort and contributes to the overall research sector in the Netherlands and beyond is a testament to its excellence as a research institution.

All of this shows not only the continuing relevance of IIAS but also the hard fact that without IIAS, contemporary social sciences, humanities, and Asian Studies globally would become a much less dynamic, much less stimulating, and much less impactful enterprise.

Iqra Anugrah is a Political Scientist and Southeast Asian Studies Scholar with a PhD from Northern Illinois University. He is an IIAS Visiting Researcher and Trapezio Seal of Excellence Fellow, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures, University of Turin, Italy.