The social consequences of the mobility of people, goods, power, and ideas constitute the central focus of the Moving Matters research programme. Members of the research group explore migrating people and moving commodities, as well as the shifting networks (of solidarity, remittances, knowledge, meaning, and power) that result from such practices. These networks stretch from the local to the transnational and necessarily involve encounters with the state through deportation regimes, access to resources and technologies, border infrastructures, decolonial and postcolonial movements, labour relations, and violence and conflict.

Programme group leaders
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Programme group: Moving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas
Research staff

Our projects
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Eur-Asian Border Lab: Advancing Trans-Regional Border Studies
Period: 01/11/2022 to 31/10/2025
The Eur-Asian Border Lab aims to catalyse trans-regional synergies and intellectual conversations among scholars studying borders and bordering across different world regions. We test theoretical ideas in diverse empirical settings and apply insights from academically peripheral regions to the heart of mainstream theorization of border studies. We understand bordering as an increasingly complicated and nuanced conceptual process at the core of many critical developments and practices worldwide.
Funded by the Horizon Europe Twinning programme
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Disrupting Sameness in Dutch Academia
Period: 01/09/2023 to 31/08/2026
When organisations talk about equality, diversity and inclusion, they mainly focus on helping minority groups. But what about the norm group? This project examines what individuals and organisations do to maintain the norm, or ‘sameness’ (uniformity), by perpetuating privilege on the one hand and reproducing marginalisation on the other. The research will take place in different academic and professional settings where ‘professionalism’ is taught: in classrooms, middle management and the medical profession. It will reveal imagined similarities in values, attitudes and approaches to professionalism and develop concrete methods to break through them – to create more equal and inclusive Dutch universities.
Funded by NWO Advancing Equity in Academia through Innovation
- Arboreal Nationalism: the Political Life of Trees in Palestine/Israel
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The Impact of Covid-19 on tourism, livelihood and imagined futures of sustainable tourism development on Wakatobi Island, Indonesia
Period: 01/01/2021 to 31/12/2023
Funded by the LPDP scholarship
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Power, Identity, and Religion: Political Participation of Indonesian-Hadhrami in Indonesian Democracy
Period: 01/01/2021 to 31/12/2024
Funded by the LPDP scholarship
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Practicing Halmath, resisting Caste: Reshaping the encounters of nomadic communities and the Indian state
Period: 01/10/2021 to 30/09/2025
Funded by the National Overseas Scholarship
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Pitching Promises, Imagining Futures: The Yogyakarta International Airport and Aerotropolis Development in Indonesia
Period: 01/09/2021 to 31/08/2025
Funded by the LPDP scholarship
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Cross-border or Borderless Trade? The Delegation of Self-Regulatory System in Transnational Mobility (A Study in Kalimantan Border)
Period: 01/09/2021 to 31/08/2025
Funded by the LPDP scholarship
- Navigating ‘Evil with Spiked Eyes': an ethnography on how the Orang Rimba contemporary Indonesian hunter-gatherers organise their education to address the pressures of assimilation
- Navigating Uncertainty: The Future of Nusantara, Hope and Fear around Indonesia’s New Capital City
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Breaking Barriers: The Emergence of Female Ulama in Politics
Period: 01/12/2022 to 30/11/2026
Funded by the LPDP scholarship
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In Search of Balance: The Effectiveness of Law and Policy for Development in the Anthropocene Era