A Liveable Kampung

Melani Budianta is a professor and a cultural studies scholar, with years of engaged research in kampung activism. Her recent publication is “Smart kampung: Doing Cultural Studies in the Global South” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 16:3, 2019. She has been working with the Indonesian ministries of Village and Marginalized Areas and Indonesian ministry of Culture in mapping the cultural potentials of Indonesian villages and kampungs.  Manneke Budiman is a professor of literature, with expertise in East Asian Studies.  He has done research and published on cultural issues, regarding state and grassroot activism, cultural identity and representation, and preservation of tradition. Manneke Budiman has also written on urban culture and its evolution in the process of Indonesia’s development. He recently published an edited volume, Collective Memory, Marginality, and Spatial Politics in Urban Indonesia (2025) with Abidin Kusno, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Kathrin Oester Znoj is a social anthropologist and filmmaker, specialised in media anthropology, global education, and migration. She repeatedly conducted research in Sumatra and West Papua between 1995-2019, taught media anthropology in different universities and developed the media anthropology curriculum at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern. She has (co-)directed and written several ethnographic documentaries and authored and edited various books.