Starting today, the annual meeting of Cooperation Indonesia-The Netherlands Program, is taking place in Jakarta, Indonesia. NWO and the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology (Kemendikbudrestek) collaborate to further stimulate long term research between the Netherlands and Indonesia. Some of the aims of this research cooperation are: To strengthen co-operations in the field…

On the 28th of August, 2025, Forest city team member Rizki Ghiffari gave a presentation on the panel of “Creative Energies? The Geographies of Collaboration at the Social Science/Energy Policy Interface”, at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025 in University of Birmingham, UK. His presentation was  entitled: Urbanization’s Impact on Energy Access in Indonesia’s New…

The Faculty of Sustainable Development (FSD) at Institut Teknologi Kalimantan (ITK) hosted a Forest City Consortium Workshop on August 19, 2025, focusing on “Sustainable and Inclusive Urbanization in IKN and Beyond.” Held at the Kalimantan Institute of Technology campus in Balikpapan, this workshop represents a step toward realizing Indonesia’s new capital as a sustainable forest…

The Forest City Research Consortium recently hosted a workshop titled “Sustainable and Inclusive Urbanization in IKN and Beyond” at Yogyakarta, bringing together cross-sector stakeholders committed to promoting sustainable, inclusive, and participatory development of Indonesia’s new capital city, Nusantara (IKN). Gadjah Mada University’s Faculty of Geography led the collaboration with key partners including Utrecht University, IHE…

The LANDAC conference featured two sessions organized by the following frontiers of the forest city team, addressing critical aspects of land governance and urban development in Indonesia, bringing together leading researchers and practitioners from multiple universities and institutions. Session 1: Shaping Collaboration in Transdisciplinary Research Projects Organized by Ari Susanti (Universitas Gadjah Mada) and Femke…

Following the successful staff exchange program that brought Dr. Erlis Saputra and Dr. Ari Susanti from Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) to Utrecht University’sDepartment of Human Geography and Spatial Planning since January 7, 2025, the exchange continued with a visit to Indonesia. A delegation from Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences completed their visit to Indonesia, deepening…

The Department of Social Development and Welfare (PSdK) at Gadjah Mada University’s Faculty of Social and Political Sciences hosted a Social Development Talks session on February 21, 2025. This engaging discussion explored the complex realities behind sustainable development rhetoric, examining how grand visions often mask underlying challenges. The session analyzed Indonesia’s New Capital (IKN) project,…

Join us on February 18th for an engaging Friends of the Future seminar with Kei Otsuki, professor of International Development Studies at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning here at Utrecht University. Otsuki will share insights from ‘Following Frontiers of the Forest City In this seminar. The research project evolves around the highly contested plan…

Since January 7, 2025, two lecturers from Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Indonesia, Dr. Erlis Saputra and Dr. Ari Susanti, have been participating in a staff exchange program with the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences in the Netherlands. As part of the program, various activities were organized,…

On the 17th of October Following Forest member Bosman Batubara gave a presentation which identified three distinct yet related qualitative moments of landscape subsumption under capital based on how value is produced and extracted in the location of Indonesia’s new capital city. Logging extraction started in the 1960s in that  area provides an example of…