Diana Suhardiman. Photo courtesy ResearchGate.
AMSTERDAM--Diana Suhardiman, expert on land and water governance and Research Group Leader at the International Water Management Institute, has been appointed director of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies effective January 1, 2022. KITLV is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Suhardiman succeeds Gert Oostindie, who became the institute’s director in 2001 and who is retiring at the end of this year.
Suhardiman (47) graduated from Wageningen University with a master’s degree in Land and Water Management and a PhD in Social Sciences. Her PhD research focused on the role of government bureaucracies in shaping water policy formulation and implementation in Indonesia. She has spent the past 15 years working in Southeast Asia, currently as Research Group Leader Governance and Inclusion at the International Water Management Institute in Laos.
Suhardiman studies regional, national and international policies at the intersection of land, water, environment and energy, in particular water governance, in Southeast Asia. She has published various books and numerous articles on this topic. She is currently researching the political economy and ecology of water governance, the influence of foreign direct investment on natural resource governance in Laos and Myanmar, and the role of knowledge-sharing and dialogue in transboundary water governance.
Suhardiman investigates the challenges faced by groups in the Global South, including the poor and those most marginalised for reasons of gender and ethnicity. She uses a wide range of approaches, including ethnography and political anthropology. Suhardiman’s wide-ranging expertise will make a major contribution to KITLV’s research themes and help to broaden the institute, which has established Governance of Climate Change Adaptation as a new research theme. She will also be sharing her large and important international network.
