Join AIYA ACT and the ANU Indonesia Institute in discussing Indonesia’s capital relocation from Jakarta to Nusantara.

In 2020, the Widodo administration selected East Kalimantan’s Penajam Paser regency as the site of Indonesia’s new capital. The city, which has been given the name “Nusantara”, only saw construction in 2022, due to delays in passing the capital move bill as legislation, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the ambitious project has progressed substantially, with limited use being targeted for August of this year. In response to this, AIYA ACT, in collaboration with the ANU Indonesia Institute and Canberra-based academics, will be in conversation to accommodate productive discussions on Indonesia’s ambitious plan. Join us to hear their insights on these recent Indonesian developments, including perspectives on Nusantara’s sociopolitics, economics, and sustainability.

About the Speakers

Arianto Patunru is the Policy and Engagement Manager of the ANU Indonesia Project. Before joining ANU he taught at Universitas Indonesia and led the Institute for Economic and Social Research in Jakarta. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research includes trade, industry, and environmental economics.

Dr Eve Warburton is a research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Change in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. She is also Director of ANU's Indonesia Institute at the College of Asia and the Pacific. Her research is concerned broadly with problems of representation and governance in young and developing democracies, with a focus on Southeast Asia and Indonesia in particular. She has published in leading disciplinary and area studies journals on topics of democratic representation, state-business relations, and the political economy of policymaking in Indonesia. Her first book manuscript, Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business and the State, is in-press with Cornell University Press.

Professor Paul Burke is an economist at the Australian National University whose research focuses on energy and environmental issues in the Asia-Pacific. He is Head of the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics (ACDE) and Deputy Director of the Crawford School of Public Policy. He has carried out various research projects on Indonesia's energy sector and economy, and co-authored the Survey of Recent Developments in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies at the time of Indonesia's 2019 announcement of the establishment of a new capital city.

Marcus Mietzner is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia and the Pacific, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He has published widely on Indonesian politics in journals such as Democratization, Journal of Democracy, International Political Science Review, Governance and Journal of Contemporary Asia. He researches the political role of the military in Indonesia; Indonesian political parties; elections in Indonesia; and comparative electoral politics in Southeast Asia. He is also currently writing a book on Jokowi's presidency, which is the lens through which he looks at Nusantara.