Deasy Simandjuntak

Researcher’s Profile

Deasy Simandjuntak is both a political scientist and a political anthropologist. She completed her PhD in 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. A recipient of the Taiwan Fellowship in 2020, Deasy is currently Visiting Associate Fellow at the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS), Academia Sinica, Taipei. Deasy publishes on Indonesian democracy/politics and Southeast Asian democracy and regularly give comments in the mass media. She is co-editor of Aspirations with Limitations: Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (ISEAS Publishing, 2018). Her most recent publication is “Disciplining the Accepted, Amputating the Deviants: Segregated Religious Citizenship in Indonesia,” Asian Journal of Law and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Current Research

• The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic to the socio-economic and state-society relations in Indonesia (under ISEAS, Indonesia Study Programme)
• Southeast Asian state of democracy (under CAPAS, Academia Sinica)
• Recognition of State Religion and Communal Relationship in Southeast Asia : Searching for good practices (collaborative project with Swansea University UK, National University of Singapore, Mahidol University Thailand)

Selected Publications

• “Authoritarianism or (non-ideological) pragmatism: current challenges to Indonesia’s democracy” in Azmi Sharom and Magdalen Spooner, eds. The Spectra of Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia (Bangkok: SHAPE-SEA, 2020), 88-104.
• (Edited Volume, with Khoo Ying Hooi) Exploring the Nexus between Technologies and Human Rights: Opportunities and Challenges in Southeast Asia (Bangkok: SHAPE-SEA, 2019)
• (Edited volume, with Ulla Fionna and Siwage Dharma Negara) Aspirations with Limitations: Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Ulla Fionna, Siwage Negara and Deasy Simandjuntak (eds) (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2018)
• “Indonesia” in Azmi Sharom, eds, Human Rights Outlook in Southeast Asia 2018 (Bangkok: SHAPE-SEA, 2019)
• “Religious Binarism and “Geopolitical” Cleavage: North Sumatra’s 2019 presidential election”, in Made Supriatma and Quinton Temby, eds, Indonesian 2019 Presidential Election (ISEAS Publishing), forthcoming.
• “Hasangapon: Understanding the new political aspiration of the Batak migrants in Riau Islands” in Francis Hutchinson and Siwage Dharma Negara, eds, Outlook of the Riau Islands Province (ISEAS Publishing), forthcoming.