I am a doctoral researcher at the Institute for History, Leiden University. My research brings together approaches from book history and the history of science to study the intersections between politics of empire and spaces of knowledge production in the early modern Indian Ocean. I focus on the islands of Sri Lanka and Java, analysing how their connections to different intellectual circuits resulted in pluralism of knowledge on medicine and natural history.

At the Herzog August Bibliothek, I will be looking at materials connected to two German physicians who worked for the Dutch East India Company in Asia: Andreas Cleyer (1634-c.1697) and Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716). These materials in Wolfenbüttel will enable me to map out the reception and afterlives of knowledge from Sri Lanka and Java in European intellectual traditions. Through my research, I hope to demonstrate how local knowledge-making practices became global, informed by multiple traditions and cross-cultural exchanges.

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/melinda-susanto

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melindasusanto/