Recorded Talks

Blink and you’ll miss me in Selling a Colonial War (Dir. In-Soo Radstake, Holland Harbour, 2023) (see the trailer here, IDFA premiére here)

Colonial Pasts and Image Wars, 20th Annual History Council of Victoria Lecture (YouTube, 25 October 2023).

On Photography and War: Decolonisation in Southeast Asia for the National Gallery of Singapore (YouTube, 13 April 2023)

On Child Labour in Colonial Indonesia for the History Council of Victoria (YouTube, 25 November 2022)

The Volatile Tropics: Albums and Commercial Photography from the Edwards Collection, Scaliger Institute Lecture, Leiden University Library (Mediasite, 31 October 2018).

On Soldiers as Humanitarians in Dutch Photographs from the Indonesian National Revolution (YouTube, 6 December 2016)

 Public Lectures

‘Everyone wants to be a historian: Global politics and political history now’, Keynote for the annual Research School for Political History/Onderzoekschool Politieke Geschiedenis opening of the academic year, 22 September 2023.

‘Late starters: The post-colonial afterlives of war photographs from Indonesia and neglected histories of colonial violence’, Photo-Sensible: Historians, Archives and the Dissemination of Controversial Photographs in the Digital Age, EyCon Project, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 9-10 June 2022.

‘Henki goes to war: Children’s labour and soldiering in the Indonesian National Revolution’, History Council of Victoria Making Public Histories Seminar, 25 November 2021.

‘Disaster work: Histories of Indonesian lives and livelihoods around volcanoes’, Monash Herb Feith Indonesian Engagement Centre, 12 September 2019.

‘Photographic appeals for cultural citizenship: Chinese Indonesians and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands’, 4 April 2019, Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore.

‘The volatile tropics: Albums and commercial photography from the Edwards Collection’, 31 October 2018, Leiden University Library.

‘Burdens of proof: Photographic archives from the Dutch military actions in Indonesia’, 8 November 2018, KITLV/Leiden University.

‘Photographic sources and historical research on the Dutch military operations in Indonesia’, 5 December 2018, Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH), The Hague.

‘Monarchy and empire in the Dutch colonial world, from Capetown to Batavia, 1898–1948’. History Circle, Lyceum Club, Melbourne, 13 October 2011.

‘Tropical landscapes and colonial discourses of abundance: Dutch still lifes from the Netherlands Indies’, University of Western Australia History Public Lecture Series, Environment and History, 19 August 2009. 

‘Race and postcolonial identity: Re-membering privileged communities from the former Netherlands Indies’, University of Western Australia History Public Lecture Series, Colonial Conquest, Violent Settlement: Re-examining the Practice and Legacy of Colonialism, 24 September 2008.

Invited Talks

‘Dutch soldier photography during the Indonesian National Revolution (1945–50) in context: Rethinking histories of colonialism and military violence’, NIOD Image Lab ‘History’s Darkroom’ Series, Hosted by NIOD and RCMC, Netherlands, 1 September 2022.

‘Rethinking histories of colonial violence, military atrocity and ethnic conflict in Indonesia through war photography’, Flinders University History Seminar, 8 April 2022.

‘Decolonisation and photography in Southeast Asia: Histories and legacies’, Melbourne University Brown Bag Seminar, Melbourne University, 7 October 2021.

‘Colonial migration circuits and cultural citizenship: Between Europe and Southeast Asia’, Global Regionalism: Shared Patterns and Distinctive Histories of the Southern Hemisphere? University College Dublin, 14 September 2018.

‘Indonesian women and children in Dutch soldiers’ barracks during the Indonesian National Revolution’, Gendered Violence Across Time and Space: The Netherlands East Indies, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Melbourne University, 9-11 May 2018.

‘In disputed territory: The Dutch monarchy during the Indonesian National Revolution and in Dutch New Guinea (1945­–62)’, Monarchies, Decolonisation and Royal Legacies in the Asia-Pacific, Sydney University, 6-7 December 2017.

‘Colonial archives and the quest for evidence of atrocity: Photography and the Indonesian War of Independence’, panel on ‘The (post)colonial archive: Re-imag(in)ing Southeast Asia’, Panel at the Association for Southeast Asian Studies UK Conference, SOAS, London, 16-18 September 2016.

‘Analgesic interventions: Soldiers, photography and liberal imperial wars in colonial Indonesia’, Translating Pain: An International Forum on Language, Text and Suffering, Monash University, 10–12 August 2015.

‘Strained encounters: Royal Indonesian visits to the Dutch court in the early twentieth century’, Royals on Tour: The Politics and Pageantry of Royal Visits, University of Sydney, 11-12 June 2015.

‘Modernities at war: Personal photograph albums from the 1940s and histories of Indonesia’s decolonisation’, Tracing Trajectories of Modernity in Southeast Asia, c. 1920-1970, KITLV Leiden, 12-13 January 2015.

‘Orangists in a Red Empire: Dutch Monarchists in British South Africa during the Reign of Queen Wilhelmina (1898-1948)’, Crowns and Colonies: Monarchies and Colonial Empires, University of Sydney, 11–13 June 2014.

‘Interlopers and incumbents: Self-representations of Javanese monarchs in photograph album gifts for Dutch royalty’, Conflict and Conciliation Across Empires: Objects and Performances in Historical Perspective, The University of Melbourne and Museum Victoria, Melbourne, 17–18 November 2011.

‘Maintaining the lustre of the Golden Age: Tales for tourists in Dutch and Danish museum collections of courtly and colonial gifts’, Courts and Luxury in the Early Modern Period: A Global Perspective, European University Institute, Florence (Italy), 20–21 June 2011.

‘The home as studio: Tea rituals and constructions of respectable domesticity in family photographs from the Netherlands Indies (colonial Indonesia) in the early twentieth century’, Facing Asia: Histories and Legacies of Asian Studio Photography. Australian National University/National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 21–22 August 2010.

Conference Papers

‘Soldiers’ Memories of Raymond Westerling and the Attempted APRA Coup in Bandung, January 1950’, Association for Asian Studies AAS in Asia Conference, Yogyakarta (Indonesia), 9-11 July 2024.

‘Framing “disaster” in colonial Java’s densely-populated volcano landscapes’, Population through the Camera, Centre for New Earth Histories, University of New South Wales, March 2023.

‘Rethinking histories of military atrocity, ethnic violence and photography, from the Aceh War to the Indonesian National Revolution’, Asian Studies Association of Australia Conference, Monash University, 5-8 July 2022.

‘Military responses to and forms of knowledge about natural disaster in colonial Indonesia, 1865–1930’, Australian Historical Association Annual Conference, ‘Unfinished Business’, Sydney/Online, November 2021.

‘‘Javanese porters and guides and the colonial origins of geotourism and science’, Colonial Baggage: Global Tourism in the Age of Empires, 1840s–1970s, Online, 18 November 2021.

‘Domestic work and survival sex in militarised context: Indonesian women in Dutch army barracks during the Indonesian National Revolution’, EuroSEAS21 Conference, Olomouc (Czech Republic)/Online, 10 September 2021.

‘Indonesia’s volcanoes as sites of tourism and tourism work’, Panel: ‘Environmental Histories Connecting Asia and Australasia’, ASAA 2020 ‘Future Asias’ Conference, Melbourne University, 9 July 2020.

‘Militarised forms of knowledge in a volatile tropics’, Disaster in Indonesia, Monash University, 10 July 2020.

With Ruth Morgan, ‘Foraging for modernity: Labour and environment in the collection of sulphur and lime, Dutch East Indies and the Australian colonies’, Extractive Industries and the Environment: Production, Pollution and Protest from a Global and Historical Perspective, Oxford University, 6-7 December 2019.

‘Female kings in the age of empire’, Monarchy in the Age of Empire, 1793–1914, Flinders University, July 2019.

‘Home (at the) front:  Dutch soldiers domesticating colonial war’, Europe’s Entanglements (Australasian Association of European Historians Conference), Monash University, 11-14 July 2017.

‘“You do not come in order to punish, but to protect”: Soldiers as humanitarians in Dutch photographs from a colonial war’, Visualising Human Rights, Fremantle, 5-6 December 2016.

‘Colonial photography and Dutch narratives of suffering after the Indonesian War of Independence (1945–50)’, Narratives of War, Amsterdam, 24–26 February 2016.

‘A humanitarian mission? Dutch soldiers’ photographs of their (colonial) war in Indonesia, 1945–49’, XXIVth Biennial AAEH Conference, ‘War, Violence, Aftermaths: Europe and the Wider World’, University of Newcastle (Australia), 14-17 July 2015.

‘Between corporate and familial responsibility: Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen and and his dual leadership roles as colonial governor and male Nassau elite’, Governing Masculinities: Regulating Selves and Others in the Early Modern Period Symposium, University of Western Australian, Perth, 11 December 2009.

‘Colonial georgic: Still life in the Netherlands Indies, 19th and 20th Centuries’, XVIIth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Association of European Historians (AAEH), Flinders University, Adelaide, 6–9 July 2009.

(with Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline van Gent), ‘Orange cartography: Nassau family identity in colonial expansion’, Perceptions of Terra Australis: A Symposium, University of Western Australia, Perth, 11–13 June 2009.

‘The colonial table: Food, culture and Dutch identity in colonial Indonesia’, XVIth Biennial Australasian Association of European History (AAEH) Conference, University of Sydney, NSW, 1–4 July 2007.

‘The President’s women: Reflections on historical representations of Indonesian women in the Sukarno art collection’, Fourteenth Annual Workshop on Southeast Asian Women, Monash University, Melbourne, 13 April 2007.

‘Being Dutch in the tropics: Landscape and identity in the Netherlands Indies, 1830–1955’, XVth Biennial Australasian Association of European History (AAEH) Conference, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 11–15 July 2005.

‘“But is it art?” Remembrance and forgetting in Dutch images of colonial Indonesian landscapes, 1816–1942’, Colonial Monuments and Collective Memory, Australian National University, Canberra, 23 July 2004.