Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Indonesia Higher Degree Research student workshop. This is essentially a mini-conference with students studying Indonesia from all around Australia (most of the students were Indonesian and studying at Australian universities). Talks were quick, only 10 minutes, and then we got feedback from an experienced discussant (often a top staff member, some of whom were professors). Then there was time for one or two questions.

I presented a smaller version of the talk that I’m giving at Cambridge this week, which is why this post is probably coming to you at some crazy hour of the morning if you live in Australia. The timing was really good for the talk, and it was a good opportunity to run some of my ideas past other Indonesian scholars to make sure that that side of it, at least, was on the right track. Because my background is in music, I worry that my Indonesian study component is not as “up-to-scratch” as it could be, but thankfully that all seemed fine to the audience and discussants. I got some homework to do on broader globalisation and international relations theories, which has at least added to my reading list for the PhD.

As this was an interdisciplinary workshop, talks were incredibly diverse. We were encouraged — even forced — to stay for the entire workshop — you could not simply pop in and out as pleased you. This was good in some ways, as it meant you always had a decent audience and I am a big champion of attending talks that may not be directly relevant to your topic as these are often where the greatest moments of serendipity happen. Having said that, when we reached our third panel with an economics component I was definitely feeling a bit drained. There were only two arts-related panels, which I didn’t mind so much, but most humanities subjects were sorely missing. There were not many history or anthropology papers, for example, but many economics, international relations, and governance papers. That is just how the dice roll sometimes.

There is probably more to say on the workshop, but I’ll be honest in that I am incredibly exhausted from my travels and pretty keen to hit the publish button on this one. I am keen to compare it with the conference I am attending this week and so I hope to add any further reflections in next week’s post.