Rate My Professor Robert Cribb

Emeritus Professor Robert Cribb is Professor of Asian History in the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, at the Australian National University. He earned a BA (Hons) from the University of Queensland and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1984, with a thesis on Jakarta during the Indonesian Revolution of 1945-1949. His career includes lecturing in contemporary Indonesian politics and history at Griffith University from 1983 to 1986 and at the University of Queensland from 1990 to 2002, a guest lectureship at the University of Leiden in 1993, research positions at the Australian National University, a fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in 1988-1989, and directorship of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies from 1997 to 1999. He rejoined the Australian National University in 2003, served as Head of the Department of Pacific and Asian History for three years, and retired in 2022.

Robert Cribb's research focuses primarily on Indonesia, with additional interests in other parts of Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia and Burma/Myanmar, as well as Inner Asia. His key themes encompass mass violence and crime, national identity, environmental politics, and historical geography. Current and recent projects include the origins of massacres in Indonesia, 'Puppet States Revisited: Empire and Sovereign Subordination in Modern Asia' with Li Narangoa, and war crimes committed by the Japanese military from 1941 to 1945 with Sandra Wilson. He has authored or co-authored nine monographs, including Gangsters and Revolutionaries: The Jakarta People’s Militia and the Indonesian Revolution 1945-1949 (1991), Historical Atlas of Indonesia (2000), Wild Man from Borneo (2014), Historical Atlas of Northeast Asia, 1590-2010 (2014), and Japanese War Criminals: The Politics of Justice after the Second World War (2017). He has edited or co-edited seven major volumes, such as The Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966: Studies from Java and Bali (1990) and Detention Camps in Asia (2022), and is editor for the volume covering 1800 to the present in the Second Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (forthcoming 2026). His pioneering work on the Indonesian killings of 1965-1966 and Japanese war crimes has significantly influenced scholarship in Asian history. Awards include Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities since 2006, with service as Head of its Asian Studies Section from 2010-2012 and 2019-2021; Honorary Life Membership of the Asian Studies Association of Australia; the NSW Premier’s History Award General History Prize for Japanese War Criminals (2017); and Wild Man from Borneo as a finalist for the same prize.