Short CV

Ratna Saptari studied Anthropology at the University of Indonesia. She obtained her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1995 based on research on workplace and household dynamics of cigarette factory workers in Malang, East Java. From 1996-1997 she held a Post-Doc position at the University of Nijmegen in a project on social security in Indonesia. From 1997-2005 she coordinated the multi-country research programme on Changing Labour Relations in Asia (CLARA) at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

Her continued focus on industrial workers was inspired by her involvement with Indonesian worker politics during Soeharto's authoritarian regime. Currently she is also involved with the Indonesian Migrant Workers' Union in the Netherlands. Her research has focused on the multi-sited nature of workers’ lives. By following cigarette workers’ lives within the global production chain, she examines the historical transformations of the global connections between foreign and domestic companies.

Research

In the last fifteen years, she has written extensively on gender and labour relations; workplace politics; domestic workers; collective and individual memories. She has been part of the project ‘Alternative Indonesian Historiographies (in collaboration with KITLV/Leiden, funded by KNAW); and a subproject within the project “Plants, People and Work: The Social History of Cash Crops in Asia, 18th to 20th Centuries” (IISH/UvA/Amsterdam, funded by NWO).