prof. dr. Susie Protschky

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Susie Protschky is Professor of Global Political History. She is specialised in modern Dutch colonialism, Indonesian history, and the history of photography. Her research ranges across visual cultures of war and violence, environment and natural disaster, gender, race and citizenship.

An Australian, Susie previously worked at Deakin University (2021–23) and Monash University (2010–21) in Melbourne, and the University of Western Australia in Perth (2008-10). She gained her doctorate at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) in 2007. Her research has been funded by major grants and fellowships from the Australian Research Council, and the Research Centre for Material Culture (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen), Scaliger Institute (Leiden University Library), and the KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies).

Susie is currently writing a history of colonial war photography from the Aceh War to the Indonesian National Revolution (1873–1950). Contracted to Cornell University Press, the book is tentatively titled Seeing Like a Soldier: Photography and Colonial Violence in Dutch Indonesia.

Her previous book, Photographic Subjects: Monarchy and Visual Culture in Colonial Indonesia (Manchester University Press, 2019), won prizes from the Asian Studies Association of Australia and the Royal Studies Journal. The book showed how photographic sources expose the importance of colonial Indonesia to the modern Dutch monarchy, and, conversely, the centrality of the Dutch monarchy in upholding colonial legitimacy in Indonesia during the reign of Queen Wilhelmina (1898–1948). Her other books are Images of the Tropics: Environment and Visual Culture in Colonial Indonesia (KITLV Press/Brill, 2011) and the edited volumes Photography, Modernity and the Governed in Late-Colonial Indonesia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015) and (with Tom van den Berge) Modern Times in Southeast Asia, c. 1920­–70 (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

Susie is a member of the Editorial Team of Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) (Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia).

For a complete list of Susie’s publications, including forthcoming work, see her personal website, https://www.susieprotschky.com/