Esther Zwinkels is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History.

More information about Esther Zwinkels

Fields of interest

• Colonial history
• Indonesian history
• Transitional justice
• Memory studies

Curriculum vitae

Esther Zwinkels obtained her BA and MA degree in History at Leiden University. In 2009 she graduated with distinction on a thesis on Indies resistance against the Japanese occupying power on Sumatra during the Pacific War. The thesis was awarded the Fruin Prize 2009 and the Erik Hazelhoff Aanmoedigingsprijs 2010 and has been published at Spectrum. Between 2014 and 2016 she was lecturer and coordinator of the Cosmopolis Programme at the department of Colonial and Global History. Esther is currently employed at the Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) in the Hague.

Current project

Zwinkels is working on a NWO-funded PhD research project entitled: Recognition and retribution. Transitional justice in the Netherlands Indies after the Second World War. Her doctoral thesis deals with Dutch prosecution policies and trials with regard to collaborators and Japanese war criminals for crimes that were committed during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. The investigations and trials related to these crimes were conducted and held between 1945 and 1949, a period during which the people were not only recovering from the experiences of the Japanese occupation, but also faced yet another war, the war of decolonization. This projects analyzes which factors shaped the prosecution policies and affected the outcomes of the trials. 

The research project is supervised by Prof. dr. H.W. van den Doel and Dr. J.Th. Lindblad.

Activities