My research follows how knowledge of the earth is made, contested, and put to work at sites of extraction in Indonesia. It moves between artisanal oil wells and industrial oil fields, coal mining landscapes in Borneo, and the policy rooms where the country's energy transition is negotiated.
Who gets to know the underground, and how does that knowledge decide who may extract from it? My dissertation takes up this question through an ethnographic and historical study of crude oil extraction in Indonesia. It compares two sites: the artisanal oil wells of Wonocolo in Bojonegoro, East Java, where communities have worked colonial-era wells for generations, and the industrial oil fields of Sanga-Sanga, East Kalimantan. Drawing on pre-dissertation fieldwork in 2025, archival research, and controversy mapping of oil regulation, the project examines how geological, technical, and vernacular knowledge compete to define what lies below and who has the right to it.
During 2026–2027, this research develops along three directions:
Archival research — Tracing how colonial and state institutions documented, mapped, and regulated Indonesia's oil fields, from the colonial period to the present.
Year-long fieldwork — Twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2027 across Bojonegoro, Jakarta, and Sanga-Sanga, with well workers, regulators, geologists, and company staff.
Geology from Below — A study of how artisanal well workers read rock, oil, and risk, and how their knowledge meets formal geological expertise.
Keywords: Subterranean knowledge, Artisanal oil, Vernacular expertise, Energy governance