Edwin Pietersma

Biography

Edwin Pietersma (he/him) is a History PhD student originally from the Netherlands but trained in the Netherlands, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. He specializes in the modern and colonial history of Japan, Siam/Thailand, and the Dutch East-Indies/Indonesia between the 1840s and 1942. In particular, he is interested in questions of migration versus nation-state and national identity formation, the nature of colonialism in East and Southeast Asia, and where they intersect. My current research project focuses on Japanese migration to Siam and the Dutch East-Indies between 1866 and 1942 and the way these small communities (500 in Thailand, 7000 in the Dutch East-Indies) complicated existing social (colonial) hierarchies and structures, as well as power relations of the diverse communities living in respective places.

Education

M.A., Cultural Anthropology – National Taiwan University.
M.A., Asian Studies – Leiden University.
B.A., History – University of Groningen.

Field

• East Asian History
• Southeast Asian History

MA Title

• “The Asian ‘Europeans’ between the cracks: the Japanese in the Dutch East-Indies and the uncertainties of colonial rule, 1899-1929”

Selected Publications

• Pietersma, E (2026). ‘The “Lord of Life” with his “Trunk King”: the usage of a Javanese Ganesha statue in the colonial collecting praxis of king Chulalongkorn, 1896-1926.’, TRaNS: Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1017/trn.2026.10020.
• Pietersma (2023), ‘From Crafts to Agency: The Legacy of Colonial Discourses in Exhibiting the Ainu in the Tokyo National Museum and National Museum of Ethnology at Osaka between 1977 and 2017′ Museum and Society 21 (3), 22-35. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v21i3.4324.
• Pietersma and Harrison (2023), ‘The Broken Coloniser: Ruptures of Homecoming and Belonging in Nyckle Haisma’s Peke Donia, de koloniaal’, Indonesia and the Malay World 51 (151), 364-381. https://doi.org/10.1080/13639811.2023.2278951.

Selected Awards

• International Institute of Asian Studies (February 2019): IIAS Grant for participation in the Double Degree program “Critical Heritage Studies of Asia and Europe”.
• Taiwanese Ministry of Education (September 2018 to February 2019): Huayu (Mandarin) Enrichment Scholarship for studying Mandarin at National Taiwan University, Taiwan.
• University of Groningen (September, 2014 to August 2015): Marco Polo Grant for studying abroad at Osaka University, Japan.

Courses Taught as TA

• Hist 246: Southeast Asian Refugees (Spring Semester 2026)
• Hist 244: Introduction to Southeast Asia (Fall Semester 2025-2026)