Inaya Rakhmani

Dr. Inaya Rakhmani is the Director of Asia Research Centre, Universitas Indonesia. Rakhmani uses cultural political economy to study media and communications as well as knowledge and information in order to explain broader capitalist changes. She is deeply concerned about social sciences, social inequalities and democratic developments. She has been researching the role of social and mass media in hindering democratic developments; in Indonesia, with comparisons to India, Egypt, and Turkey (from 2015 to now). She is concerned with the fact that social sciences and humanities are at times disconnected to the needs of the people, both in long term analysis and short term responsiveness. Since 2014, she has been mapping the structural barriers of social scientists to carry out critical research in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. She has also been actively engaging with local, national, and global policy makers to make the issue better known. She believes that social problems are multi-dimensional, hence collaboration with inter-disciplinary approaches are crucial. Her work has been publishes at at the Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, the Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia (TRANS) and she also the author of ‘Mainstreaming Islam in Indonesia: Television, Identity and the Middle Class’ published by Palgrave MacMillan, 2016. She is currently finalising leading a study on social sciences and policy responses in Southeast Asia (eleven countries) in partnership with the Global Development Network and the IDRC. She is also an honorary member of the Indonesian Young Academy of Sciences (ALMI).