Taufiq Hanafi is interested in cultural politics, especially in regards to the production, regulation, supervision and distribution of (literary) texts. He has recently completed his PhD thesis Leiden University that looks into knowledge production in Indonesia under the New Order authoritarian regime and the state censorship that surrounds it. In the Netherlands, he is involved within the decolonization research project organized by KITLV, NIOD, and NIMH and from 2021 to 2022 has translated into Indonesian at least three books that resulted from the project, namely: Sporen vol betekenis: ‘Getuigen &Tijdgenoten’ over the Indonesische Onafhankelijkheidsoorlog, Over de Grens: Nederlands Extreem Geweld in de Indonesische Onafhankelijkheidsoorlog, 1945-1949, and Beelden van de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog, 1945-1949. For the ERC project Textual Microcosm at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, Taufiq investigates the nuance and complexity in the interlinear translation of the Holy Quran into Sundanese.

Dr. Keiko Kamiishi received her Ph.D.(2022) and M.A.(2016) in International Area Studies from Nanzan University, Japan. She has been studying the history of Javanese literature, its connection with epics and myths, the dynamics between Indianized elements and indigenous elements, and the literary activities of court poets and scribes. Her interest also includes reception, aesthetic effect, performativity, prosody, and metaphors in the literature.

Her dissertation explored how the Javanese unique aesthetic sense manifests in the literature by interpreting the metaphors and emotional expression in a specific literary work titled Kakawin Ghaṭotkacāśraya.

After completing the dissertation, she worked as a part-time Lecturer in Indonesian grammar.

Currently, she joined the ERC project as a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is dealing with Old Javanese poetries translated into Modern Javanese in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, with the perspective of examining modern Muslim translators’ interpretation of ancient literature based on Hindu-Javanese culture.

A faculty member at the Department of Qurʾānic Studies of Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia and the director of Laboratorium Studi Qur’an-Hadis (LSQH). After completing his bachelor and master studies in Qur’anic Studies in UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, he received his Ph.D at the Department of Islamic Studies, Orientalisches Seminar, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in 2019. His work mainly deals with Qur’anic studies, Qurʾānic hermeneutics and the history of tafsīr in Indonesia, with his most recent publication includes “Vernacularism and the Embers of Conservatism: The Production and Politicization of Qur’an Translations” (2003) and The Official Indonesian Qur’an Translation: The History and Politics of Al-Qur’an dan Terjemahnya, The Global Qur’an Series (Cambridge, OpenBook Publisher, 2022).

Dr. Maftuhin is an associate professor of Islamic Law at the State Islamic University of Sunan Kalijaga, Indonesia. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Asian Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He joined the ERC-funded project, "Textual Microcosms: A New Approach in Translation Studies." In particular, he is researching the translation of Qur'anic verses about Muslim women's clothing in various interlinear translation manuscripts in the Indonesian archipelago from the 19th to the 20th centuries.

He is an interdisciplinary academic, working on various issues in Islamic law, political Islam, and disability studies. His work includes the translation of English and Arabic books into Indonesian, various works on Islamic and disability studies, and popular articles for Indonesian national newspapers and magazines. 

Since 2010 he has been helping people with disabilities to get access to educational rights, particularly higher education. He was Head of the Center for Services for Persons with Disabilities (2013-2020) and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of INKLUSI: Journal of Disability Studies.

For more detailed information about his works, check his blog at https://maftuh.in

Willem van der Molen studied Javanese literature at Leiden University (PhD 1983). After thirty years of teaching at the same university he spent another ten years, until his retirement, as a researcher at the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Carribean Studies (KITLV), also in Leiden. He is professor of Philology and Old Javanese at Universitas Indonesia, and was visiting researcher and visiting professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Osaka University and the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies. His publications include a re-edition of Kern’s edition of the Old Javanese Ramayana.

Willem van der Molen in Jerusalem

From 13 April to 5 May 2023, at the invitation of Ronit I was part of the research group, doing research, participating in the discussions, weekly lunch meetings and daily chats, and making new friends. It was an excellent opportunity to hear about everybody’s work, the more so as Ronit’s perfect timing of my visit allowed me to participate in the yearly workshop of the project. For my research during these three weeks I concentrated on the genre of Javanese texts known as jarwa ‘interpretation’, written in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In three talks I explored – summarily – the views of some famous predecessors on this genre, how the idea of jarwa had worked out in the case of the Old Javanese Ramayana (according to the Central Javanese tradition), and, finally, how the Merapi-Merbabu branch of the Ramayana tradition adds to the picture. The lively discussions after the talks, while laying bare how little has been done in this particular field, were very helpful to take me further.

The Old Javanese enthusiasts, inside and outside the project, set time apart for a short series of reading sessions. Once a week we bent over the Smaradahana, a challenging text that left us with many a question mark as to the correct interpretation (in this we found ourselves in the company of its learned editor, Poerbatjaraka). I have to admit that I did not spend much thought on jarwa literature before I took the bus to Jerusalem. Following others who thought so already I now realize that there are some quite interesting and enjoyable texts tucked away in this corner of Javanese literature. It is my plan to continue paying attention to those texts, in the first place the various manifestations of the Ramayana.