Fridus Steijlen is Endowed Professor ‘Moluccan Migration and Culture in a comparative perspective‘ at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the VU University, Amsterdam, and senior researcher at KITLV. He is working on postcolonial migration from Indonesia (a.o. Moluccans and Indo-Europeans), daily life in present day Indonesia, decolonization of Indonesia and postcolonial commemorations. He coordinates the audio-visual project ‘Recording the Future’. This is an ambitious long-term data-generating documentation project creating an audio-visual archive on everyday life in Indonesia. He is also involved as coordinator oral history of the witness project, in the program carried out by KITLV, the Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH) and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies ‘Decolonisation, violence and war in Indonesia, 1945-1950’.
Fridus Steijlen studied anthropology, with a specialization in Indonesia and ethnic minorities, especially Moluccans, in the Netherlands, at the University of Amsterdam. After his graduation he worked at various institutions, particularly the University of Amsterdam and the Free University of Amsterdam. In 1996 he obtained his PhD at the University of Amsterdam with a doctoral thesis on the history of Moluccan nationalism in the Netherlands. After his completing his doctoral degree, he worked as a researcher at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, until he became the coordinator of the Oral History Project on Indonesia at the KITLV (SMGI). In 2002 he became a researcher at the KITLV. On 17 Juni 2017 he was appointed endowed professor ‘Moluccan Migration and Culture in Comparative Perspective’ at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. This chair was established by the Foundation of the Moluccan Historical Museum.
Steijlen was a senior researcher in a government-sponsored research project on the history of Moluccans in the Netherlands, coordinated by the Moluccan Museum in Utrecht. This research resulted in 2006 in a standard work on the history of Moluccans in the Netherlands. Between 2005 and 2008 Steijlen was responsible for the Indisch Knooppunt project, combining a digital research guide with oral history on Indisch organization. Finally Steijlen is regularly involved in training programs on oral history in the Netherlands and Indonesia.
