The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) alliance signed a collaboration agreement with the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology on 23 September. This enables LDE and five Indonesian universities to form a consortium that will centre joint research and teaching projects.
The main focus of the collaboration is the Indonesian government's priorities such as health, digitalisation, tourism and heritage, the green economy (economic growth that is not at the expense of the environment) and the blue economy (the sustainable use of oceanic resources). The construction of the new Indonesian capital Nusantara on the island of Borneo will also be a focus.
Interdisciplinary
The collaboration is important to the Indonesian universities (Universitas Airlangga, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Universitas Indonesia, Institut Teknologi Bandung and Universitas Mulawarman) for the three LDE universities' expertise. Leiden is providing medical, ecological and anthropological knowledge, Erasmus knowledge about business and public administration and Delft technology and design.
LDE researchers can also learn a lot from the collaboration. Constructing a new capital city in a tropical ecosystem has never been attempted. It is a huge experiment with plenty of scope for biodiversity research, for example.
Different matching events about energy transition, for example, brought together Dutch and Indonesian researchers. This should lead to research projects starting soon.
Teaching
New research projects are not all that the collaboration entails: investments will also be made in educational programmes and in the planned thesis labs students will be able to conduct interdisciplinary research that will aid the development of the new Indonesian capital. A minor (Future Challenges Lab: Co-creating sustainable practices in and beyond the Indonesian City) began in Jakarta at the start of September.
The Indonesian Netherlands Consortium on Sustainable FuTures (INUCoST), as it is known, was signed on Tuesday in The Hague. Indonesian minister Nadiem Makarim spoke about how INUCoST came about and congratulated the participating universities. As president of the LDE board, Annetje Ottow signed the agreement with the Indonesian Minister of Education, Culture, Science and Technology.
Photo: Barbra Verbij
