Tag: Martin van der Velde

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PhD Defence of Lidya Sitohang

On Tuesday, March 22, Lidya Sitohang (Co-supervised by Dr Lothar Smith and Dr Martin van der Velde) successfully defended her PhD thesis on ‘Cross-border interaction in the context of development in the Indonesian-Malaysian border region’. A thesis in which she nicely shows, that places are more than just ‘bordered’ regions and that in these places, people are making a living and in their everyday cross-border interactions are the source for development of the region. Also, these examples of everyday border crossings show again that we as human beings are always already beyond our own borders. An issue which I regularly refer to also on this blogsite, both in theoretical and philosophical terms as well as in more empirical terms. Especially her subtitle beautifully expresses the embodiment of cross-border interaction: ‘Garuda is on my chest, but my stomach is in Malaysia’.

To quote her summary (click on picture to the right to download the full PhD Thesis): ‘This study investigates the border crossing of Krayan’s locals into Malaysia as a means of meeting their daily needs, which cannot be met in Krayan because of the poor state of development of the region. People living in the more central areas of Indonesia tend to regard the Krayan locals’ border crossing into Malaysia as a sign of decreasing loyalty, and hence a lack of nationalistic pride, towards the State of Indonesia. In contrast, the Krayan locals feel that their sense of nationalism and loyalty to the State of Indonesia is proven through their persistent wish to live in an area at the very edge of the country’s territory, regardless of the lack of development in Krayan. Living on the border with Malaysia, the locals see themselves as guardians of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Indonesia. Another factor is that in Krayan border crossing has long been part of life and existed prior to the formation of the two states. Crossing the border into Malaysia continues to be a matter of visiting family members, where ‘family’ includes all individuals who have a common cultural background and live on either side of the border. Also, as the respondents explained, the poor development in the region forces them to go to Malaysia and this does not compromise their loyalty to the State of Indonesia. The locals mentioned the expression Garuda di dadaku, tapi Malaysia di perutku (Garuda is on our chest, but our stomach is Malaysia), which aptly depict that they hold Indonesia in their hearts even though their livelihoods are supported by Malaysia’ (p. 260).

Even though the Covid-19 crisis slowly but surely does not restrict us in our travelling behaviour and our ‘border crossings’ her defence also showed that this kind of research is still very much needed for the rethinking of the way we deal with borders, as the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) did not grant her the Visum to defend her thesis live at the University in Nijmegen, 🙁
although especially academic research should by principle be borderless.

But we keep working on it…

 

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Master Programme 2020-2021

Our Human Geography master programme has been steadily growing in number of students. Of course, this is a very good sign, as it shows how attractive our programme is for students and how relevant the topics are which we address in our programme. This really triggers our students. Geography in general and Human Geography, in particular, is about how we deal with our physical, but also with our social environment. And this is not an easy nor unproblematic relationship, and our students are really very keen on making a difference in practice, and on helping to find solutions to urging problems. The topical issues we deal with in Human Geography are not very evident from the name of our discipline: ‘Human Geography’. Who really knows what that is about…? But if you take a look at our specific Master Specialisations, it becomes clear how topical and important these issues are, which we address in our programme. Through these Master Specialisations, we seem to touch a sensitive chord and that explains the great attraction our programme has on students.

Especially in the Dutch University System, which for its funding is so dependant on the number of students, this is very important. So, both for reasons or creating a sound financial basis for our teaching and research, as well as to make an important contribution to a better world, I have always been dreaming of surpassing the magical number of 100 new master students. This is of course, somehow ridiculous because 99 or 101 are numbers which are as beautiful and magical as 100. But of course, we somehow need a vision and to speak with Martin Luther King, ‘we need a dream’!

So I promised my colleague in our Geography Group, Dr. Martin van der Velde, who is responsible for the sometimes tedious job of finding Supervisors for our master students, a bottle of wine, once we surpass the number of 100 new master students. Although we all enjoy teaching and enjoy working together with students on a better future, it is also quite an effort, especially in times of severe austerity measures, my colleague was therefore always hoping not to get that bottle of wine, and was rather satisfied with the ‘small is beautiful’ slogan.

Nevertheless, this year my dream came true… We have now well surpassed the threshold of 100 new Human Geography Master Students, while the way we organise our Master Programme still preserves the advantages of ‘being small and beautiful’. Probably it is totally irrational, but somehow it gives me a good feeling, especially if one remembers that when I started my job at this University there were only about 12 Master Students.

But under the current Covid-19 circumstances we cannot really celebrate this occasion. So this virtual blog entry and the virtual bottle of wine should do the job. Thanks to all our Geography Group members! We could not have done it without you…! Cheers.

And of course also thanks to our students. With them at least we could properly celebrate the start of the new academic year with an informal bicycle tour to the Thornse Mill and a real Dutch pancake dinner.

We somehow again have contributed to the special place, called ‘Human Geography’ and the ‘Human Geography group’ at the Radboud University Nijmegen. This is ‘intellectual placemaking’…