During Prof. Spiller's previous visit to NIAS he worked on the question "What is music-making’s role in responding to modern problems of identity and sustainability?"
Henry Spiller is Professor of Music at the University of California, Davis, USA. He is an ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on Sundanese music and dance from West Java, Indonesia. He is interested particularly in investigating how individuals deploy music and dance in their personal lives to articulate ethnic, gender, and national identities. He has studied Sundanese music and dance for almost five decades, and he has conducted fieldwork in Bandung, West Java, on many occasions.
Speaking about his return to NIAS Prof. Spiller said: “I am thrilled to be back at NIAS as an alumnus in August 2022. NIAS is the perfect base for me to pursue two archival projects: (1) engage with the legacy of the colonial Dutch musicologist, Jaap Kuns, and explore his interactions with Javanese musicians, and (2) mine Dutch mission society archives for information they contain about 19th and 20th century music in Indonesia.”
The forthcoming book of Prof. Spiller Bamboo Murmurs is slated to be published by SOAS Studies in Music (Routledge) by the end of the year (see https://www.routledge.com/Archaic-Instruments-in-Modern-West-Java-Indonesia-Bamboo-Murmurs/Spiller/p/book/9781032299341)
NIAS Fellows Association
Joining the NIAS Fellows Association (NFA) is a great way to continue your journey as part of the wider NIAS Community.
The NFA is an alumni network of over 1300 former fellows from 50 years of NIAS history as an Institute for Advanced Study. It provides a forum to maintain and deepen the connection within each year group and also provides a mechanism to allow fellows from across year groups to get in contact with each other.
About NIAS
The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study is an intellectual haven for international researchers, writers, journalists and artists to pursue their research or projects, to work in an interdisciplinary environment and to share their knowledge with society.
Every year it offers a diverse year-group of about 50 NIAS Fellows the opportunity to devote themselves to an independent research project. NIAS is the oldest Institute for Advanced Study in Europe whose founding mission is to foster curiosity-driven research. It is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and is located in Amsterdam.