IIAS National Master’s Thesis Prize in Asian Studies 2018
This year’s Master’s Thesis Prize went to Yannick Lengkeek for his thesis on fascism in late colonial Indonesia. Yannick completed his thesis, entitled, ‘Neither Show nor Showdown: The “Fascist Effect” and Cooperative Nationalism in Late Colonial Indonesia, 1935-1942’, at the Institute for History of Leiden University in November 2017. It was supervised by Dr Bart Luttikhuis (Institute for History and KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden).
With this yearly prize, IIAS not only honours talent but also aims to stimulate and facilitate a further career in research; the prize consists of a three-month full fellowship with IIAS, either to be used to write a PhD project proposal or a research article.
The prize was presented by Dr Nira Wickramasinghe, Chair of the IIAS Board and Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University: “In this thesis, Yannick Lengkeek argues that fascism was seriously contemplated as an alternative by Indonesian nationalists who were not sympathetic to socialism. He focuses on performative politics (‘doing fascism’) to detect the fascist imprint present in one of the largest political parties of the 1930s, Parindra, the Great Indonesia Party. This thesis inserts Indonesia within the field of Fascist studies, a notoriously eurocentrist field. A path breaking venture in an under-explored and under-theorised field based on extensive archival work in Indonesia and the Netherlands.”
During the award ceremony, held at Leiden University’s Faculty Club on 24 January 2019, praise was also given to the three other shortlisted nominees:
Selima Abraham (Delft University of Technology), ‘Beyond Urban: Mitigating Urban Biases in Planning Processes in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region through Agro-Urbanism’.
Joel Edouard (Leiden Institute for History), ‘Slavery, Resistance, and Colonial Power in Dutch Mauritius (1664-1710)’.
Levi Voorsmit (Leiden Institute for Area Studies), ‘Friendship and Place in Fourteenth Century China: Gao Qi, Wang Xing, Xu Ben and Zhang Yu’.
Submissions to the IIAS National Master’s Thesis Prize in Asian Studies can be made each year before 1 November. Eligible MA theses are those in the broad field of Asian Studies in the Humanities or Social Sciences (or related fields), completed during the previous 12 months (1 Nov-31 Oct) at a Dutch university, and marked with an 8 or higher.