Hywel Coleman

Can you tell us about your research, work and expertise in Southeast Asia?

I have lived and worked in Indonesia for much of the last 50 years. I have researched aspects of language, education and the material culture of the country throughout that time. I am now an Indonesian citizen and live in Depok, West Java. I hold an Advanced Diploma in Indonesian from the Institute of Linguists, London. This is a translating/interpreting qualification.

My career in Indonesia began in 1972 as a volunteer English teacher. This was followed by a succession of English language teaching placements in industrial and vocational education contexts. From 1980 to 1984 I led a UK-funded project to develop the skills of young English lecturers in Universitas Hasanuddin. I have worked with the Ministry of Education and other bodies in education development projects, such as the Decentralised Basic Education Project, 2005-2008. This was funded by the Asian Development Bank and focussed on strengthening school autonomy in some of the poorest districts in Eastern Indonesia.

I was a Lecturer then Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, 1987-2001. I retain strong links with the University, particularly with the School of Education and the Brotherton Library’s Special Collections. I was a member of the Court of the University, 2019-2024.

I have become increasingly concerned by inconsistency between language policies and practice in Indonesia. For instance, official policy states ‘we prioritise Bahasa Indonesia’ yet in reality it is often English that is prioritised in education and other areas of contemporary Indonesian life. For more than two decades now my work has focussed on language policy and linguistic human rights.

For the last three years I have held an informal Adjunct Lecturer position in the Graduate School of UNJ (Universitas Negeri Jakarta - Jakarta State University). I have also worked closely with ITB (Institut Teknologi Bandung), UPI (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia - Education University of Indonesia) and many other higher education institutions across Indonesia.

Currently, with two colleagues, I am using 2022 Census data to identify where the country’s 700+ local languages are no longer being used in everyday interaction with neighbours. Initial findings from 60 districts in 4 provinces were presented in a 2023 UNESCO conference in Bangkok on multilingualism. There are 38 provinces and 500+ districts in the country so we still have a long way to go! We hope that this research will help us to understand why children not being taught through the medium of their mother tongues contributes to Indonesia’s extremely low literacy and numeracy scores. (According to the OECD’s PISA, the literacy level of 15 year olds in Indonesia has declined consistently since 2000.)

I have also carried out research and consultancy work in other parts of the world, including Gabon, Morocco, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. As in Indonesia, this has been primarily concerned with language policy, especially in education. I was active in the Language & Development Conference Series, which ran between 1993 and 2019; I edited/co-edited the Proceedings of the Tashkent (2003), Addis Ababa (2005), Colombo (2011), New Delhi (2015) and Dakar (2017) conferences.

Aside from my work in language and education, I have also been collecting traditional Indonesian textiles since 1973. Ownership of the collection was transferred to the University in 2022 and became part of the International Textile Collection.

• OBE, 2000
• Life Fellow, University of Leeds, 2011
• Honorary Doctorate, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, 2021