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About Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies
The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) is a research institute in the humanities and social sciences that focuses on Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. It places special emphasis on Indonesia and the Dutch Caribbean. The KITLV conducts interdisciplinary and comparative historical research.
Its outstanding collections, housed at Leiden University library, allow researchers to study continuities and discontinuities between the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. Their empirical and theoretical research contributes to a broader debate about complex processes of globalisation, in particular regarding such issues as state formation, violence and citizenship, processes of mobility, and the formation of ethnic and national identity.