Mohsin, Anto | Indonesia
Anto Mohsin is Assistant Professor in Residence in the Liberal Arts Program at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) and an affiliated faculty member of Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture Program. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of infrastructure, energy, and environment and of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. He is a member of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs’ Climate Crisis + Media Arts working group. At NU-Q he teaches undergraduate courses that examine science, technology, environment, and disasters in society as well as on a history of knowledge production of and in Asia.
He has researched and published different science and technology studies topics. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in several journals including Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, and Arcadia, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal for short, engaging environmental histories. He has also published a chapter on a community resilience in the wake of a long-running disaster in the edited volume The Sociotechnical Constitution of Resilience (Palgrave Macmilan, 2013) and on energy infrastructure in the anthology Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia (University of Hawaii, 2022). His first book, Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development, published by the University of Wisconsin Press, comes out in November 2023. Prior to joining NU-Q, he held a Henry Luce Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian Environmental Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He received his doctoral degree in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Cornell University.
Project at IAS-STS:
Title of research project: PLN’s Tim Srikandi: Indonesian Female Electric Maintainers
Abstract: In the still male-dominated field of electrical infrastructure maintenance, there are several women who work in this area. This project examines female maintenance workers and managers employed by the Indonesian electricity company PLN. These maintainers belong to a group called “Tim Srikandi” in Indonesian, in reference to a term used to denote the brave and skilled female archery drawn from the Indian epic Mahabharata. They are tasked to ensure that the electrical transmission and substations in their area of operation is well maintained. My project will detail their tasks, challenges, and the rewarding aspects of their jobs. It will also discuss their recruitment, training, work rituals, and their take on their roles in a government-owned utility company. My study of these maintenance workers aims to shed light in the role of gender in maintenance and in the functioning of a technological company.
Selected Publications
Refereed Journal Articles
2018 “The Overseas Fellowship Program: A Technoscientific Scholarship Program in New Order Indonesia,” The Korean Journal for the History of Science 40-2 (August): 275-303.
2017 “Lighting ‘Paradise’: A Sociopolitical History of Electrification in Bali,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Society: An International Journal (2017) 11:9-34.
2014 “Wiring the New Order: Indonesian Village Electrification and Patrimonial Technopolitics (1966-1998),” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia vol. 29 no.1 (March).
Book
Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023)
Book Chapters
2023 “Peripheral Infrastructure: The Electrification of Indonesia’s Borderlands” in Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia edited by Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
2018 “Coping with Indonesia’s Mudflow Disaster,” in The Sociotechnical Constitution of Resilience A New Perspective on Governing Risk and Disaster edited by Sulfikar Amir. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.