Arnoud Arps

Arnoud Arps is an Assistant Professor of Extended Cinema, Film Heritage, and Memory at the University of Amsterdam (2024–present) and a Rubicon Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Media and Memory Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam (2023), an M.A. (2015), and a B.A. (2013) in Media and Culture from the same institution. He has held visiting researcher positions at the University of Melbourne (2018), Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (2017, 2019), and UC Berkeley (2020).

His research focuses on (post)colonial Indonesian cinema, Dutch Indies literature, cultural memory, and cross-media narratives. He critiques colonial legacies through analyses of travelogues, animated films, and historical re-enactments, emphasizing transnational memory and decolonial frameworks. His work bridges literary criticism, film studies, and cultural anthropology, often exploring how material culture (e.g., cookbooks, home movies) mediates postcolonial identities.

Arps is Editor-in-Chief of Popular Culture Review, Editor of Indische Letteren, and serves on the International Advisory Board of Southeast Asian Media Studies Journal. His recent publications (2023–2024) address topics like Japanese internment camp narratives, animal metaphors in decolonization literature, and transnational memory through Danish writers’ perspectives. His work frequently engages with Indonesian popular culture, advocating for localized memory frameworks.

Grants and fellowships include the Niels Stensen Postdoctoral Fellowship (2023–2024) at the University of Oxford and UCLA. His research has been published in Memory Studies, Journal of Migration History, and Indische Letteren, among others. He actively contributes to public discourse through media essays on Indonesian cinema and historical memory, including articles in Eye Magazine and New Mandala.