Abidin kusno biography

Abidin Kusno is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and he is currently the director of York's Centre of Asian Research .
My academic background is in Architectural Design and Engineering (BA from Petra University, Surabaya, Indonesia) and Art History (MA and PhD.
Abidin Kusno is an architectural and urban historian with interests in sociology, anthropology, visual cultures, history, and politics.

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1In 2000 Abidin Kusno, currently an associate professor at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, published his first book in English: Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, urban space and political cultures in Indonesia (Routledge, isbn 0415236150). In this publication, Kusno surveys architecture and urbanism in Indonesia’s colonial and postcolonial era through a political and historical analysis of various case studies. In 2010, Kusno published a second English book, The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia. In his words, the aim of this latter work is to explore “the roles that architecture and urban space play in the making and unmaking of a history still in formation” in order to tease out “some layers of the spatial history of Indonesia where techniques of power became the bases for modes and processes of identity formation on the one hand and the breaking of that formation on the other.” To achieve this objective, Kusno applies the cross-disciplinary methodology he used in his

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Abidin Kusno is an architectural and urban historian with interests in sociology, anthropology, visual cultures, history, and politics, Dr. Kusno is exploring the historical and contemporary conditions of urban politics and city life in Indonesia. His research, which examines the roles of cities in shaping the political cultures of decolonization, nation building, and development, provides a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of space, power, and culture, and contributes to urban advocacy. He teaches at the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia.

Dr. Kusno's involvement with the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory includes the development of the slide library in the Visual Resources Centre, providing infrastructure for digitizing images. He has also been on the advisory committee for a number of graduate students in the department and teaches courses cross-listed with Art History and Asian Studies, such as “The City and the National Imagination.” His publications include: Behind the Postcolonial (Routledge, 2000) an

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Abidin Kusno

Research Interests

I joined York as a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies in 2015. Before my arrival at York, I was the Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture at the Institute for Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. I also held previous positions at New York University and Binghamton University, State University of New York. My academic background is in Architectural Design and Engineering (BA from Petra University, Surabaya, Indonesia) and Art History (MA and PhD from SUNY Binghamton).

My academic work draws upon a range of fields including urban studies, history, politics, cultural studies, architecture, design and geography. My research focuses on Indonesia, especially Jakarta and evolves around the issues of politics, culture and the built environment. I examine the ways in which architecture and urban space shaped politics, environments and political consciousness of different social groups at different moments in the country’s urban history. My teaching encompasses issues around politics, planning and urbaniz