What happens when music becomes more than something we listen to?

This question emerged from the recent participation of Jawahirus Saniah, DEEP EnGender Researcher, in the Punk Scholars Network (PSN) and IASPM SEA Conference. The conference brought together scholars and cultural practitioners working across popular music, culture, identity, gender, peace, and ecology.

For DEEP EnGender, the conversations offered useful ways to think about how music can become a space for producing and transmitting knowledge.

Exploring Gender Through Popular Music

In the Timurnesia panel, Saniah presented research on Bugis-Makassar popular songs and how men negotiate masculinity through the cultural concept of siri’. The presentation placed popular music alongside broader discussions of identity, peace, and gender in Eastern Indonesia.

Other presentations explored how music travels across geographical boundaries and how regional identity is continually shaped through popular culture. Yosia Pongohi, for example, discussed the circulation of East Nusa Tenggara popular music through digital platforms and its movement into the national music industry.

Yogie Mofun examined rap as a medium for peacebuilding among young people in post-conflict Ambon. Together, the presentations showed how popular music can provide a way to examine identity, social relationships, and cultural negotiations that are often difficult to capture through conventional categories.

Music, Ecology, and Resistance

One of the conference discussions that connected strongly with DEEP EnGender's work was the use of music in ecological resistance.

A study of Wiji Kendeng examined how young followers of the Samin tradition used tembang macapat alongside punk music in their resistance to cement factory expansion in the Kendeng Mountains. Traditional and contemporary musical forms became part of a wider struggle over land, identity, solidarity, and ecological futures.

This resonates with DEEP EnGender's interest in local ecological knowledge and cultural practices. Music can carry memories and knowledge across generations, while also creating solidarity around environmental struggles.

The discussion also connects with Saniah's ongoing research on women's singing as a practice of care and ecological knowledge transmission among the Bugis community. Singing can be understood as a practice through which relationships with people, places, and environments are remembered and transmitted.

Expanding How We Listen

The conference also raised questions about inclusion. For Deaf communities, music can be experienced through vibration, lyrics, and visual forms. This challenges narrow assumptions about what it means to experience music and reminds us that accessibility is also part of knowledge production.

The Visual Ethnography Workshop offered another way to think about this question. Its central idea, "When words can't tell, pictures will," opened possibilities for using photographs, drawings, and videos as forms of knowledge rather than simply illustrations.

For DEEP EnGender, these approaches can expand the meaning of dialogue by creating more ways for communities to communicate their experiences and knowledge.

A Little Bit Punk

Perhaps the most unexpected takeaway was the connection between the spirit of punk and DEEP EnGender.

Punk's emphasis on critical thinking, equality, grassroots knowledge, and questioning established structures resonates with a research practice that values community knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Perhaps, alongside being fun, DEEP EnGender can also be a little bit punk. 🤘

We are pleased to share that Dedi Arifka, Managing Director of DEEP EnGender, participated in the United Nations Responsible Business and Human Rights Forum Asia-Pacific 2026, held in Bangkok, Thailand, from 14–17 September 2026.

The four-day forum brought together civil society organizations, government representatives, businesses, researchers, and other stakeholders from across the Asia-Pacific region to discuss responsible business conduct, human rights, environmental and human rights due diligence, digital technologies, and access to remedy. The programme included a range of formats, including Deep Dives, Panels, Policy Labs, Spotlights, Film Screenings, Plenaries, Roundtables, Workshops, and Exchange Cafés.

One of the sessions attended was the Policy Lab on Platform Power, Consumer Rights, and Corporate Accountability in Asia-Pacific, organized by Tifa Foundation and Open Net Korea. The discussion examined consumer harms linked to digital platforms, gaps in corporate due diligence, cross-border data governance, grievance mechanisms, and the need for stronger accountability from both States and companies. The session also emphasized the importance of developing concrete recommendations for due diligence, remedies, and regulatory coherence across the region.

Dedi also participated in the workshop Sustaining MHREDD Momentum in Asia: Sharing Regional Strategies for Resilient Campaigns and Lessons from the EU’s CSDDD. The workshop brought together civil society organizations and human rights and environmental defenders to exchange practical strategies for sustaining advocacy around mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. Discussions focused on coalition-building, public engagement, counter-narratives, human rights education, and approaches that can be adapted across different national contexts.

Another relevant session was the panel Embedding Human Rights Safeguards in AI Product Design: Taking a Child Rights-Based Approach, organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNICEF. The session explored the need to integrate human rights due diligence throughout the AI product lifecycle, beginning from the design stage and continuing through development and deployment. Particular attention was given to children’s rights, data governance, transparency, accountability, and the role of civil society and communities in shaping safer and more responsible AI systems.

Through the forum, DEEP EnGender had the opportunity to bring perspectives from Indonesia into regional discussions while learning from organizations working on digital rights, corporate accountability, human rights due diligence, and responsible technology across Asia-Pacific.

The participation also strengthened existing relationships and opened new connections with practitioners and organizations working on related issues. These conversations will be continued through further communication, exchange of resources and experiences, and exploration of potential areas for collaboration.

The experience contributes to DEEP EnGender’s ongoing work, including Digital Re-Grow, by connecting local community-based work with broader regional conversations on digital civic space, accountability, participation, and rights-respecting technology.

DEEP EnGender looks forward to continuing these conversations and strengthening collaboration with regional partners toward more inclusive, participatory, and accountable digital and development practices.

Herlina Dedy Listiani, Research & MEAL Coordinator at DEEP EnGender, was selected to participate in the ASEF Capacity-Building Training Programme on Inclusive and Sustainable Development: Gender Equality & Women’s Participation, held in Kunming, Yunnan, China, from 7–9 September 2026.

Herlina was selected from more than 3,000 applicants and was among 23 practitioners invited to exchange perspectives on women’s participation, inclusive governance, gender equality, and sustainable development across Asia and Europe. This fully-funded programme was hosted by the Foreign Affairs Office of the People’s Government of Yunnan Province.

However, the planned journey to Kunming was interrupted by the Anak Krakatau eruption on 6 September 2026, which disrupted air travel and affected flight operations through   Soekarno-Hatta. After exploring alternative travel arrangements, the disruption ultimately made it impossible for Herlina to travel, and she had to withdraw from the programme.

While the physical participation could not take place, the experience raised important reflections on the relationship between participation, infrastructure, and access. As highlighted in DEEP EnGender’s reflection, meaningful participation is not only about being invited into a room, but also about having the infrastructure, resources, time, and support needed to reach that room.

The experience also reinforces the importance of considering gender within discussions of infrastructure and resilience. When public systems are disrupted, the ability to adapt can depend heavily on financial resources, mobility, flexible time, and access to alternative arrangements, such kind of conditions that are not equally available to everyone, particularly women. 

For DEEP EnGender, this interrupted journey has become an opportunity to further reflect on inclusive governance and sustainable development. True inclusion requires not only creating spaces for women’s participation, but also strengthening the systems and infrastructure that enable them to participate meaningfully, including during times of disruption.

Although Herlina’s seat in Kunming remained empty, the experience continues to inform DEEP EnGender’s work on gender justice, inclusive participation, resilience, and equitable access.

DEEP EnGender congratulates Herlina on her selection and appreciates ASEF for the recognition and opportunity to connect practitioners across Asia and Europe.

"Care is never simply an act of kindness. It is a way of holding communities together when political violence, ecological destruction, and uncertainty seek to pull them apart."

Across Southeast Asia, places marked by conflict, disaster, extraction, and militarization are often narrated through the language of crisis. They appear on maps as borderlands, conflict zones, or vulnerable regions, while the everyday lives unfolding within them are pushed to the margins. Yet communities continue to imagine futures through quieter practices—women caring for one another, carrying memory across generations, rebuilding relationships with land, and refusing the idea that violence should define the limits of possibility.

These everyday practices became the starting point of Feminist Futures in Southeast Asia's Contested Territories: Care, Conflict, and Alternative Imaginaries, a panel convened by Dialogue Empathy Ecology Peace EnGender (DEEP EnGender) during the 2026 Asian Center for Women's Studies (ACWS) International Conference, B/ordering the Global: Transnational Feminist Critiques from Asia, hosted by ACWS, Ewha Womens University, South Korea. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, the panel explored how feminist knowledge emerges through lived experiences of care, memory, ecological justice, and collective survival across Southeast Asia's contested territories.

As panel organizer, DEEP EnGender coordinated the session from beginning to end. While the conference committee provided the online platform, the panel itself unfolded through DEEP EnGender's facilitation—creating a space where dialogue felt collaborative, reflective, and grounded in relationships built before participants entered the conference room.

The session was chaired by Dr. Anna Christi Suwardi, PhD, FHEA, Founder and Chairperson of DEEP EnGender, who opened the discussion by inviting participants to read the four presentations as interconnected conversations rather than separate case studies. Throughout the session, she returned to a central proposition: care is not a private virtue but a political practice that sustains communities living with prolonged uncertainty.

The conversation began in Mindanao, Philippines, where Allan Benedict C. Solacito and Alexia Anne M. Suñaz reimagined chismis through a feminist lens. Often dismissed as women's gossip, chismis emerged in their research as an infrastructure of care through which mothers circulate information, nurture trust, and sustain everyday economies of possibility within communities shaped by conflict.

From there, participants travelled to Loei, Thailand, where Jirajade Wisetdonwail (Maprang) presented Care as Memory: Transgenerational Weaving Motifs in Post-Mining Loei, Thailand. Her presentation illuminated how women transformed weaving into a living archive after decades of ecological destruction caused by gold mining. Every woven motif carried stories of environmental loss while simultaneously preserving cultural memory, intergenerational knowledge, and aspirations for ecological regeneration.

The discussion then moved to Aceh, Indonesia, where Rizkika Lhena Darwin examined hydrometeorological disasters through the lens of feminist political analysis. Her research revealed how disaster governance reshapes vulnerability, exposing women to heightened risks of gender-based violence while exposing the consequences of absent infrastructures of care during emergency response and recovery.

The final contribution unfolded through a different mode of storytelling. Herlina Dedy Listiani invited participants into DEEP EnGender's empirical work in Thailand's Deep South through a creative video narrative that foregrounded women's everyday experiences of living, caring, and sustaining community within one of Southeast Asia's longest-running conflict regions. The visual narrative offered space for the audience to encounter the textures of everyday life before entering conceptual discussion, allowing lived experience to speak on its own terms.

Building upon the video, Dr. Anna Christi Suwardi offered an analytical reflection that situated these empirical accounts within broader feminist conversations on care, borders, and protracted conflict. Drawing connections across the four presentations, she demonstrated how care takes different forms across Southeast Asia—as relational infrastructure, collective memory, ecological responsibility, and everyday political practice.

The panel concluded with Dr. Anna's closing reflection, weaving together the conversations from Mindanao, Loei, Aceh, and Thailand's Deep South into a shared feminist horizon. Care appeared not as a singular concept but as multiple political practices through which women continue to defend dignity, sustain relationships, and imagine futures in places where uncertainty has become part of everyday life.

Around 36 participants joined the session from across Southeast Asia and beyond, contributing to a lively discussion that extended the conversation across disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Vellayati Hajad reflected on the methodological possibilities of chismis as a site of inquiry within gender and public administration research, while Ajeng Inayatul Ilahiyah invited participants to reconsider how the word gossip itself has long carried gendered assumptions that diminish women's ways of producing and circulating knowledge. Sadar Ginting explored community resistance in post-mining Thailand and Annissa Vidyanita questioned the growing criminalization of LGBTQ+ communities in Indonesia's digital spaces. Responding from her own experiences as a queer activist, Maprang reflected on how online platforms have become vital spaces for solidarity, visibility, and collective action.

For DEEP EnGender, convening this panel was never solely about bringing together four presentations. It was about cultivating a space where feminist scholarship could remain accountable to lived experience, where academic inquiry could stay in conversation with community knowledge, and where relationships across Southeast Asia could continue beyond the conference itself.

Digital transformation is often imagined through the language of innovation, infrastructure, and connectivity. We measure progress by the expansion of networks, devices, and digital skills. Yet beneath these conversations lies a quieter question that is too often overlooked: who gets to define what meaningful digital participation looks like?

This question sat at the heart of Mendengar dari Dalam: Tantangan Partisipasi Digital Masyarakat Adat Suku Anak Dalam, a public webinar convened by DEEP EnGender as a way to amplify our reflection on the Digital Re-Grow Initiative.

Rather than asking how Indigenous communities should adapt to an increasingly digital world, the conversation invited us to reverse the gaze. What if digital futures were shaped by Indigenous ways of knowing? What if participation began not with technology, but with relationships, reciprocity, and care?

Bringing together 67 participants from across Indonesia, from Aceh to Kupang, the webinar became more than a space for sharing research findings. It became an invitation to listen. Students, researchers, academics, civil society organisations, local government representatives, and community facilitators gathered to reflect on what digital participation means when viewed through the everyday realities of the Suku Anak Dalam community in Jambi.

Insights from the Digital Re-Grow Initiative reminded us that digital technologies are never separate from the social worlds they inhabit. A mobile phone is not simply a device; it can become a bridge between families, a record of ecological change, a medium for preserving stories, and a space where women and young people negotiate new forms of participation. Digital life, in this sense, is woven into the ordinary practices of sustaining community.

Yet listening also requires us to remain attentive to complexity. As reflected throughout the discussion, digital inclusion cannot be celebrated uncritically. Questions of gender, power, safety, and representation remain deeply embedded in digital spaces. Expanding access does not automatically dismantle patriarchal structures, nor does technological innovation necessarily strengthen collective ways of living. Without careful reflection, digital transformation can reproduce the very inequalities it promises to overcome.

For DEEP EnGender, these conversations reaffirm a simple but profound commitment: communities are not merely beneficiaries of innovation; they are producers of knowledge. Their lived experiences, ecological wisdom, and collective practices offer critical insights into how more just and caring digital futures might be imagined.

Perhaps the most meaningful outcome of this gathering was not a set of conclusions, but a shift in perspective.

Before asking how Indigenous communities can participate in digital transformation, perhaps we should first ask:

What can digital transformation learn from Indigenous communities?

The Digital Re-Grow Initiative continues to remind us that transformative change begins not with designing solutions for communities, but with listening to them, with humility, with curiosity, and with the willingness to be changed by what we hear – because listening is not the beginning of our work. Instead, listening is how we work.

We are pleased to share that Sadar Ginting, DrPH, PhD, Co-Founder & Executive Director of DEEP EnGender, contributed to the Symposium on Strengthening Evidence on the Outcomes of Locally Led Adaptation (LLA), hosted by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), held on June 3–4 in Bangkok, Thailand. The symposium brought together researchers, practitioners, and organizations committed to advancing knowledge and evidence on community-led responses to environmental and climate-related challenges.

Drawing on DEEP EnGender’s engagement with Indigenous Suku Anak Dalam (SAD) communities. Sadar Ginting, DrPH, PhD, contribution explored how local communities understand and respond to environmental change through their own knowledge systems, food practices, and relationships with forests and rivers. The work highlighted the importance of recognizing Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences as valuable foundations for adaptation planning and environmental governance.

The contribution also examined the challenges faced by Suku Anak Dalam communities, including reduced access to forests, changes in traditional food systems, and the impacts of land conversion on community livelihoods. At the same time, it emphasized the resilience of Indigenous communities in maintaining ecological knowledge and adapting to changing environmental conditions while preserving their cultural identity and connection to the land.

Through this symposium, DEEP EnGender contributed perspectives from Indonesia to broader international discussions on locally led adaptation, environmental justice, and community-based knowledge production. The event provided an important opportunity to share lessons from the field while learning from diverse adaptation practices across different regions and contexts.

Sadar Ginting, DrPH, PhD, participation reflects DEEP EnGender’s ongoing commitment to advancing research and advocacy that center Indigenous perspectives, ecological justice, and locally grounded solutions to environmental change. We look forward to continuing these conversations and strengthening collaborative efforts toward more inclusive and sustainable futures.

DEEP EnGender participated in the AIFIS–MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies 2026, “Making Knowledge, Making History: Producing the Indonesian Past, Present and Future” (26–30 May 2026), organized by the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) and Michigan State University. The conference brought together scholars, researchers, and practitioners to examine how knowledge about Indonesia is produced, contested, and transformed across different social, political, and historical contexts.

Within this space of critical dialogue, Daniel Jeremia Natanael Nababan (Researcher, DEEP EnGender) presented a paper examining the representation of Indigenous women in news coverage of the ecological conflict between the Pandumaan–Sipituhuta communities and PT Toba Pulp Lestari (PT TPL) in North Sumatra. The research explored how environmental conflicts are not only struggles over land and natural resources, but also sites where gendered inequalities are produced, maintained, and challenged.

Drawing on media framing analysis, the study highlighted how Indigenous women continue to experience multiple forms of exclusion, including marginalization, subordination, increased burdens of care and livelihood, violence, and stereotyping. At the same time, the research demonstrated how Indigenous women have actively participated in defending customary forests, sustaining community livelihoods, and shaping collective resistance, despite their contributions often remaining underrepresented in dominant media narratives.

Across conference sessions and discussions, recurring questions emerged regarding whose knowledge is recognized, whose experiences are made visible, and whose voices continue to be marginalized within public discourse. These conversations resonate strongly with DEEP EnGender’s commitment to advancing research and advocacy that center Indigenous perspectives, gender justice, and community-based knowledge in addressing environmental challenges.

Insights from this conference will contribute to DEEP EnGender’s ongoing research, organizational learning, and public-facing knowledge production. Participation in AIFIS–MSU 2026 further strengthens our commitment to supporting more inclusive forms of knowledge that recognize the experiences, agency, and leadership of communities at the forefront of ecological and social transformation.