Talks
Guest Lecture on Gender Pluralism ‘Gone too Far’: The Making of Sexualized Others in Indonesian Public Discourse
On 11 November 2025, I was invited to speak about how feminist and queer movements in Indonesia, a region with a long history of gender pluralism, are increasingly framed as “kebablasan” or “gone too far,” marking certain bodies and politics as excessive and socially threatening at the Anthropology Lecture Series 'Excess', organised by Sandra Calkins, University of Bayreuth.
Lecture on 'Politics of Care in Indonesian Queer Activism,' Queer Research Worlds” Lecture Series. FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (3.11.2025)
Presenter 'Anti-Gender Mobilizations and Religious Nationalism in Indonesia,' paper presented at the International Workshop on Religious Nationalism, Plural Democracy, and Autocratization, organised by Saskia Schaefer, Humboldt University Berlin (23.10.2025)
Presenter 'Moral participations at the Margins: Muslim queer and trans religious agency in Indonesia,' paper presented at the Conference 'The Role of Islam and Christianity in Public Space: Perspectives from Indonesia and Germany,' Uni. Münster (27.9.2025)
Speaker in 'Caring for Queer Rights in Indonesia and Beyond,' a conversation with Kamilia Manaf, organised by Watch Indonesia (23.9.2025)
Presenter 'Indonesia Without X: Geopolitical Circulation of Anti-Gender Rhetoric in Indonesia and Beyond,' paper presented at the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference, Walailak University, Thailand (24.7.2025)
Speaker and Panelist at Pride at MDC - Resilience in Times of Change, Max Delbrück Center (18.7.2025)
Presenter 'Living Legacies: An Oral History of Waria’s Self-Organising in Yogyakarta'
On February 23, 2024, Rully Mallay and I were invited to present findings from our collaborative research with Benjamin Hegarty, Amalia Puri Handayani, and Arum Marsicha at the workshop “Alternative Heritage-Making for the Future: Asia’s Heritage Strategies Beyond the Mainstream” at the University of Heidelberg.
Photo by Meike Karolus
Presenter ‘Dwelling with through distance: Reflections conducting an oral history research on memories of HIV among transgender women community in Yogyakarta,' paper presented in the International Workshop 'Embodied, Emotion and Sensorial Knowledge: Perspectives from Asia,' National University of Singapore (17.2.2023)
Panelist in 'Teori Kwir Gaya Indonesia' Online Roundtable at the Indonesia Council Open Conference, organised by Benjamin Hegarty and Febi R. Ramadhan (27.9.2022)
Panelist in ‘Decolonising anthropology: Decentering ethical and epistemic positions’, co-organised by the Institute of Anthropology and the Institute of African Studies, University of Leipzig (4.7.2022)
Panelist in ‘Desperate Living: Collectivising Queer Care’, Studio Voltaire, London (28.5.2022)
Panelist in ‘Devoted to Lauren Berlant’ Online Roundtable at the International Conference 'Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion,' University of California, Riverside (20.2.2022)
Panelist in ‘Southern Attitudes in Anthropology: Critical Debates and Disciplinary Engagements’ Online Roundtable, IUAES (International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences) Congress: 'Heritages, Global Interconnections in a Possible World,' Yucatan, Mexico (9.11.2021)
Panelist in ‘Enduring Climate Change’ together with Arts Collaboratory food and climate change working group at the second annual Assembly for commoning art institutions at Casco Art Institute, Our House is on Fire (25.10.2019)
Panelist in 'Negotiating Research Ethics' Online Workshop, organised as part of Co2libri (Conceptual Collaboration-Living Borderless Research Interaction), a joint program of the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University Berlin, and ZMO Berlin (19.10.2021)
Panelist in 'Decolonising Knowledge: Positioned Conversations'
In this roundtable organised as a part of DFG-Network Shaping Asia on 16 July 2021, Veronika Kusumaryati, Thomas Stodulka, and I draw on our diverse epistemic positions and research experiences across Indonesia, West Papua, and beyond to reflect on how anthropology, affect, and collaborative knowledge-making can be mobilized to challenge entrenched hierarchies and imagine more decolonial academic futures.
Panelist in ‘Beyond Representation– About artistic collectives and political allyship’ organised by Diversity Arts Culture for After Europe festival, Berlin (12.10.2019)
Presenter 'Politics in the Cracks: Indonesian Muslim Queer Communal Care and Belonging,' paper presented at the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS), Humboldt University Berlin (13.9.2019)
Panelist in 'Responding to Troubling Times: The Urgency of Collaborations Between Academics and Artists,' at the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS), Humboldt University Berlin (11.9.2019)
Invited talk: ‘Enduring hostility: Unpacking anti-queer sentiments in Indonesia,' at the International Conference 'Gender, Sexuality, Religion: Thinking Beyond LGBT Moral Panics in Indonesia,' organised by SOAS and University College London (13.7.2019)
Public lecture on ‘Queer Mode of Endurance’
In this talk, organised by Institute for Queer Theory, I engaged with the political potentials of endurance through the lens of my ethnographic study with Muslim queer communities in Indonesia. Filled with failures as moments of exhaustion, endurance signals a slow, long-drawn and less heroic outlook of queer politics and at the same time remains faithful to their claims towards an open-ended becoming. This event was held at aquarium Südblock on July 4, 2019.
Photo by Simon Kentgens
Panelist in ‘instituting/fleeing’, in the Symposium of DFG-Graduate college ‘Das Wissen der Künste’, Universität der Künste Berlin. (28.6.2019)
Presenter ‘Seeking solidarity in opacity,' paper presented at the International Conference ‘Embodied Histories – Entangled Communities: Southeast Asian and Western Approaches to Narratives and Performance Art,’ organised by Hamburger Bahnhof–Museum für Gegenwart Berlin and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective,’ FU Berlin, supported by the Goethe-Institut Southeast Asia (14.6.2019)
Invited talk: 'Between Hyper- and In- Visibility: Decolonial futures of Indonesian Muslim queer,' in Padat Merayap/Congestion event series organised by Riksa Afiaty at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht (25.4.2019)
Found photo courtesy of Anang Saptoto
Invited talk: ‘Inhabiting difference: The Affective Lives of Indonesian Muslim Queer’, at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), Leiden
In this talk, taking place on April 23, 2019, I presented the findings of ethnographic research on how Muslim queer individuals and communities navigate the affective tensions that arise when their faith, desires, and ways of living are deemed by mainstream society as incompatible.
Presenter ‘Living moral life at the margins,’ paper presented at the international workshop 'Moral Politics of Nationhood: Constructions of Sexual, Political and Religious Others in Contemporary Indonesia,' Leiden University (2.11.2018)
Presenter ‘Emotional landscape of Muslim Queer counterpublics in Indonesia,' paper presented at the 10th European Feminist Research Conference, Georg-August University Göttingen, (15.9.2018)
Presenter ‘Fantasy of becoming ordinary: Indonesian Muslim waria in the shadow of ongoing violence,’ paper presented at the International Workshop 'Fantasies, Anxiety, Difference: The Figure of the Other in the Aftermaths of Violent Political Transformation,' Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen (3.5.2018)
Presenter ‘Becoming liminal communities: Moral engagements of Muslim queers in North Aceh, Indonesia,’ paper presented at the International Workshop 'Islam, Urban Life and the Production of (Moral) Norms,' Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin (27.5.2016)
Panelist in ‘LGBT Rechte in Indonesien – In akuter Gefahr?’
In solidarity with increasing attacks against sexual and gender minorities in Indonesia Watch Indonesia! and taz organised this event on May 26, 2016.
Presenter ‘Fleeing from affective communities to safety: Muslim queer persecution in Indonesia.' paper presented at the 3rd European Geographies of Sexualities Conference, Sapienza University, Rome (16.9.2015)
Presenter 'An affective evaluation on collaborations' paper presented at the International Conference Spectres of Evaluation 'Rethinking Community/Art/Value,' Center of Cultural Partnership, University of Melbourne (7.2.2014)
Presenter 'Bypassing the Margins: Emotion Circulation and Gay Muslim Subjectivities in Indonesia,' paper presented at the 2nd European Geographies of Sexualities Conference at the FCSH, UNL, Lisbon, Portugal (6.9. 2013)
Presenter ’“Inner Conflict” as Sites for Felt Communities,’ paper presented at the 4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies, University of Groningen (3.7.2013)