Research Area: Borneo Studies
Archaeology and Knowledge Networks
Description
Societies in Borneo have been interacting with people and visitors within and across the island through trade, migration, warfare, marriage and religious practice. The intangible aspect of the interaction formed the knowledge tradition that once held together the overlapping yet connected people of coastal and hinterland. The knowledge tradition has both a material existence and a culture that could benefit by archaeological method. Potential research topics are spatialisation of Borneo in indigenous texts, indigenous accounts of travel and visitors, and reconstructing material cultures through exchange networks.
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Life History, Narrative and Religion
Description
Story-telling had been a fundamental aspect of normative socialisation among various Borneansocieties. People have also been telling stories about their spiritual experience, while learnedmen’s accounts were told orally and in written forms. Religions such as Islam and Christianityhave introduced writing system to the indigenous societies for religious learning, and have beenused by the believers to engage with the state and the non-state actors. Potential research topicsare meaning-making and contesting in text, constructing spirituality in written and oral tradition, religious texts in rural congregation and dissemination of religion through oral stories.
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Cross-Border Mobility, Economy, and Security
Description
State-defined political borders on the lands and maritime Borneo remain pivotal to practical issues of economic development, cultural identity, ethno-national conflict and political sovereignty. However, there are also other forms of equally, and in some, more important such as cultural, social, economic and religious borders that have major impacts on the way in which society is ordered and pigeonholed. Potential research topics are the relation between everyday life-worlds and social borders, the reconfiguration and contestation of border between the states, and the nonstates, the community’s construction of socio-spatial distinction and its relation to resources, adat, and memory.
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Traditional Jurisprudence and Indigenous Knowledge
Description
The social research of adat differs from the legal research because it looks at adat as a part of the social structure, and elucidation of how it relates to the norms and social consensus. Legal practitioners and researchers made use of the social findings to understand how such rules function in the community and the nature of the rules construction, supervision adaptation over time. Potential research topics are the nexus between customary law and resource management, the collaboration and conflict between conservation management and local adat, the philosophy and thoughts of indigenous adat and its reconfiguration in contemporary times.
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Climate Change, Technology, and Indigenous People
Description
The traditional knowledge of indigenous people plays an important role in understanding the impacts of climate change and its mitigation. Technologies, digital and non-digital, can enhance the adaptation strategies but also introduced new risks into the community. Potential research topics are the application of technology for climate adaptation, technology transfer from public/ private sector to community, technology use and adaptation and the consequence of technology to community cohesion.
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Encountering Indigenous and Western Pharmacopeia
Description
Until the discovery of laboratory medicine in the late 19th century, Europeans residing in the tropics had adopted the knowledge of local knowledge of climate, clothing, and diet into their health management. However, despite Borneo’s location as a natural site of various plants and herbarium known for their medicinal value, studies on the cross-cultural interaction between indigenous pharmacopeia and its western counterpart - either historical or contemporary - are still preliminary. Students may contribute to the emerging area of research by exploring potential research topics for example, adaptation of indigenous medicine in Borneo with scientific rationalisation, the contribution of indigenous medicine to sustainable practice and the community-scientific collaboration in the plant genetic resources. Students may benefit from the multidisciplinary supervision offered in the Institute such as geography, ecology, anthropology, and pharmacy.
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