IFAR Atma Jaya Scholars
Indriaswati Dyah Saptaningrum, PhD
Dr. Saptaningrum is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law Atma Jaya Catholic University and the Executive director of Atma Jaya Institute of Public Policy (AJIPP). Before joining UAJ, for more than ten years, she worked in the field of legal reform and human rights advocacy, including human rights promotion in national and local policymaking. She conducts advocacy research, and legal and human rights research, and creates capacity-building programmes for non-profits and government agencies. She obtained her PhD in Law from the UNSW Law School in Sydney. Her dissertation investigates the laws and regulations on the internet as an emerging regulatory field and power contestation among key actors which has shaped the development of this field (2008-2018). Currently, she is working on a collaborative diagnostic study on the violence against women in VR/AR jointly with Monash University Malaysia.
Muhammad Fajar, PhD
Muhammad Fajar obtained his PhD in the field of comparative politics from Northwestern University. His dissertation explored the impact of Indonesian student movements during the regime transition period (1998-1999). The dissertation was an intersection of his research focuses on social movements, state formation, and youth activism from a comparative perspective. He is now working on research projects on the digital activism divide among Indonesian civil society organizations and the comparative study of Indonesian environmental youth movements. His research can be found in media outlets such as The Conversation and Fulcrum.
Yoes C. Kenawas, PhD(c)
Yoes C. Kenawas is a political scientist with 15 years of experience working on democracy, political parties, subnational politics, and international relations in Southeast Asia. He is finishing his dissertation on the subnational variation of dynastic politics in Indonesia. He combines quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods in his research. His research on dynastic politics has been featured in national and international media, including The Economist, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, South China Morning Post, Kompas, and Tempo. He is interested in two other issues that seem worlds apart: the use of blockchain technology to improve the quality of democracy and how mystical beliefs influence politicians’ behavior. He believes in the power of comedy to build a mature democracy. He is actively involved in various forums on democracy, both in Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific.
Rahardhika Utama, PhD
Rahardhika Utama is a sociologist with a PhD from Northwestern University, specializing in comparative-historical research of development. Rahardhika is passionate about conducting high-impact research that solves real-world problems by incorporating innovative methods stemming from data science, ethnography, and comparative historical social science. His research interests are in the areas of comparative development, corruption, bureaucracy and politics, social policy and inequality, and social determinants of health. Rahardhika’s current research investigates the variation of development among agrarian economies of Southeast Asia. In his dissertation, Embedded Peasantry and Economic Transformation in the Asian Rubber Belt, he explains why some countries have seen miraculous economic growth while others have not by focusing on how changes in agricultural political relations structured the trajectory of economic transitions in Southeast Asia. Working papers from this research received two national awards for the best graduate research paper from American Sociological Association (ASA) and American Political Science Association (APSA).