What is the format of the event?

The event combines a masterclass with an international conference format.

Masterclass and International Conference on the History of Medicine in Indonesia (HOMI) 2026

Name: Masterclass and International Conference on the History of Medicine in Indonesia (HOMI) 2026
Start: 2026-09-23T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z
Location: Surabaya

Sep 23–26, 2026Surabaya, IndonesiaIn-person

Registration open

The Masterclass and International Conference on the History of Medicine in Indonesia (HOMI) 2026, held in Surabaya, IDN, offers a comprehensive exploration of medical history within the IDN archipelago. This event combines a masterclass format with an international conference, fostering in-depth discussions and knowledge exchange among scholars and practitioners. The focus is on the historical evolution of medicine in IDN, providing a platform for diverse perspectives and research findings.

Committees & topics

Topics
Local Knowledge in a Global Perspective · Epidemics Without Borders · Transnational Circulation of Medical Knowledge · Public Health Ethics and Policy · Gender, Body Care, and Mental Health · Indonesia's Contribution to Global Health · Healing, Faith, and Science Across Cultures · Medical Education and Global Professionals

Why it matters

Understanding the historical trajectory of medicine in IDN is crucial for contextualizing contemporary public health challenges and policy development. The conference provides a unique opportunity to delve into the complex interplay of traditional healing practices, colonial influences, and modern medical advancements that have shaped healthcare in the region. By examining these historical foundations, participants can gain insights into the cultural, social, and political factors that continue to impact health outcomes in IDN and beyond.

This event is particularly significant given IDN's vast geographical and cultural diversity, which has led to a rich tapestry of medical traditions. The insights generated from this conference can inform global health initiatives by highlighting successful historical adaptations and persistent challenges. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of the discussions, encompassing history, anthropology, and public health, underscores the importance of a holistic approach to understanding health systems.

How to prepare

Prospective participants should prepare by familiarizing themselves with the broad strokes of IDN history, particularly as it relates to public health and scientific development. A strong understanding of the region's diverse cultural and religious landscapes will be beneficial, as these elements have significantly influenced medical practices over centuries. Researchers planning to present should focus on how their work contributes to a nuanced understanding of IDN's medical past, considering both indigenous knowledge systems and external influences.

Attendees should also consider the broader implications of historical medical narratives for current global health discourse. Reflecting on how historical precedents can inform contemporary debates on healthcare access, equity, and innovation will enrich their engagement. Engaging with materials that explore the intersection of history, culture, and medicine will provide a solid foundation for participation in the masterclass and conference sessions.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Indonesia

As the host nation, IDN is central to the conference's theme, offering a rich historical context for the study of medicine.

Role in topic

IDN serves as the primary geographical and cultural focus, providing the historical backdrop for all discussions on the evolution of medical practices, traditional healing, and public health policies within the archipelago.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Local Knowledge in a Global Perspective

Indigenous and vernacular medical traditions across the Indonesian archipelago — from Javanese jamu and Balinese usada manuscripts to Batak, Bugis, and Dayak healing practices — have long coexisted with imported Ayurvedic, Chinese, Arab-Islamic, and European medical systems. Colonial-era Dutch physicians and naturalists in the Dutch East Indies catalogued these practices in works such as Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense (1741) and the studies of the Bataviaasch Genootschap, often extracting knowledge while marginalizing its practitioners. Postcolonial scholarship has since reframed these traditions as legitimate epistemologies rather than mere folklore. Today, local knowledge sits at the intersection of cultural heritage protection, intellectual property law, and global health pluralism. The WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy (2014-2023, extended through 2025) and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing have pushed states to formally recognize traditional knowledge holders. Indonesia's 2019 Law on Health Workers and its Saintifikasi Jamu program attempt to integrate traditional remedies into the national health system through clinical evidence-building. The core debate concerns how local healing knowledge can circulate globally without being decontextualized, commodified, or appropriated, and how historians of medicine should narrate traditions that were long dismissed by biomedicine but are now sought after by pharmaceutical research and wellness markets.

Key players

Epidemics Without Borders

The Indonesian archipelago has historically been a crossroads for epidemic disease, exposed to plague, smallpox, cholera, and influenza through monsoon-driven maritime networks linking South Asia, the Middle East, China, and Europe. The 19th-century cholera pandemics reached Java via pilgrim and trade routes; the 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 1.5 million people in the Dutch East Indies. Colonial responses, including quarantine stations at Onrust Island and pilgrim health controls in the Red Sea, foreshadowed modern international health regulation, formalized in the International Sanitary Conferences from 1851 onward. In the 21st century, Indonesia has been central to debates about cross-border disease control. The 2007 dispute over H5N1 avian influenza virus sharing — when Indonesia withheld samples citing inequitable vaccine access — catalyzed the 2011 Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework. COVID-19 reopened these fault lines, leading to the WHO Pandemic Agreement adopted in May 2025, whose pathogen access and benefit-sharing system remains contested. The historical and contemporary issue is the same: epidemics ignore borders, but surveillance, vaccines, and political accountability rarely flow symmetrically between the global North and South.

Key players

Transnational Circulation of Medical Knowledge

Medical knowledge has rarely belonged to a single civilization. Galenic, Ayurvedic, and Chinese humoral systems mingled along Indian Ocean and Silk Road circuits long before European expansion. Arab-Islamic medicine, transmitted through pesantren and Sufi networks, shaped therapeutics across Southeast Asia, while Dutch and later German biomedical training reached the archipelago through the STOVIA medical school in Batavia, founded in 1851, which produced both physicians and early nationalist leaders. In the 20th century, Rockefeller Foundation hookworm and malaria campaigns, Japanese wartime medical infrastructure, and Cold War-era Soviet, American, and Chinese health aid all left institutional imprints on Indonesian medicine. Postcolonial actors pushed back, asserting the right to define national pharmacopoeias and training curricula. WHO's Alma-Ata Declaration (1978) on primary health care drew explicitly on experiences from low- and middle-income countries. Today, transnational circulation continues through clinical trials, generic drug supply chains, digital health platforms, and academic mobility. The historiographical challenge is to move beyond diffusionist narratives — knowledge flowing from West to Rest — and recover the multidirectional exchanges in which Southeast Asia has long been a producer, translator, and adapter of medical ideas.

Key players

Public Health Ethics and Policy

Public health has always involved ethical trade-offs between collective welfare and individual liberty, and between state authority and community autonomy. Colonial Indonesia saw coercive vaccination campaigns, plague-house demolitions in Malang in the 1910s, and segregated leprosy colonies — measures justified by public health but inseparable from racial hierarchy. The Pergerakan Kesehatan and early nationalist physicians such as Abdul Rivai and Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo critiqued these practices, framing health as a right tied to political self-determination. Post-independence, Indonesia's family planning program (BKKBN, founded 1970) became internationally celebrated but also criticized for coercive elements during the New Order. The 2014 launch of Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN), now one of the world's largest single-payer health insurance schemes, raised new ethical questions about rationing, rural access, and the role of private providers. COVID-19 sharpened debates over mandatory vaccination, data privacy, and emergency executive powers. Globally, the post-2025 Pandemic Agreement, WHO ethics guidance on AI in health, and ongoing debates over reproductive rights and end-of-life care frame public health ethics as a contested terrain where historical memory matters as much as bioethical principle.

Key players

Gender, Body Care, and Mental Health

Histories of medicine in Indonesia and beyond have often rendered women, gender-nonconforming people, and the mentally ill as objects rather than agents of care. Yet midwives (dukun bayi), female herbalists, and women's religious networks have long been primary providers of reproductive, postpartum, and infant care across the archipelago. Colonial medicine professionalized obstetrics and gynecology while marginalizing these practitioners, and confined the mentally ill in institutions such as the Buitenzorg asylum, established in 1882, which embodied European psychiatric assumptions ill-suited to local idioms of distress. The 20th century brought women into formal medicine — Marie Thomas became the first Indonesian woman to qualify as a physician in 1922 — and saw the rise of women-led public health campaigns. Nevertheless, maternal mortality remains high relative to regional peers, and the 2014 Mental Health Law and subsequent reforms have struggled to dismantle pasung (shackling) practices and stigma. Globally, the WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (extended to 2030), the Guttmacher-Lancet Commission on sexual and reproductive health, and growing attention to men's mental health and LGBTQ+ care frame body, gender, and mind as inseparable historical and policy concerns.

Key players

Indonesia's Contribution to Global Health

Indonesia's role in global health is often underestimated. Christiaan Eijkman's work in Batavia in the 1890s on beriberi laid the foundation for vitamin science, earning a 1929 Nobel Prize, while local researchers and patients were essential, if uncredited, contributors. The Bandung Conference of 1955 helped frame health as a development right for newly independent states. In 2007, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari's refusal to share H5N1 samples without guaranteed vaccine access reshaped global norms on viral sovereignty and equity. Indonesia is today a top-tier vaccine producer through Bio Farma, a member of the COVAX manufacturing network, and a leader in halal vaccine certification influential across Muslim-majority states. Its experience implementing JKN, conducting mass tuberculosis and malaria programs, and managing health in a vast archipelagic geography offers transferable lessons. Indonesia has also been active in the G20 Joint Finance-Health Task Force, the Pandemic Fund, and South-South cooperation through ASEAN. The core question is whether Indonesia is recognized as a norm-shaper in global health governance or treated primarily as a recipient and case study — a tension central to the broader history of medicine outside the North Atlantic.

Key players

Healing, Faith, and Science Across Cultures

Healing has always been entangled with the sacred. In the Indonesian archipelago, Hindu-Buddhist therapeutic manuscripts, Islamic prophetic medicine (tibb al-nabawi), Christian missionary hospitals, Chinese temple medicine, and indigenous animist practices have coexisted and competed. Pesantren-based healers, kyai, and dukun continue to serve large populations alongside biomedical providers, and major outbreaks — from cholera to COVID-19 — have repeatedly brought religious authorities into public health communication. The historiography of medicine has moved away from a simple opposition between faith and science. Recent scholarship on the early modern Islamic world, on Jesuit medical missions in Asia, and on Pentecostal healing in the global South emphasizes that biomedical and religious frameworks often share patients, vocabularies, and institutions. Indonesia's Majelis Ulama Indonesia rulings on vaccines, organ transplantation, and end-of-life care illustrate how religious jurisprudence directly shapes biomedical uptake. The debate today concerns how health systems can engage religious actors as partners — in vaccine confidence, mental health, palliative care, and bioethics — without subordinating clinical evidence or marginalizing religious minorities and the non-religious.

Key players

Medical Education and Global Professionals

Modern medical education in Indonesia traces to the Dokter Djawa School established in 1851, which became STOVIA in 1898 and a crucible of both biomedical training and nationalist mobilization — Budi Utomo was founded by STOVIA students in 1908. The Faculty of Medicine at Universitas Indonesia, founded after independence, anchored a national network that has since expanded to more than 90 medical schools, with persistent disparities in quality and rural deployment. Globally, the 2010 Lancet Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century called for transformative learning and interdependent, networked training systems. WHO's Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health 2030 and the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel address brain drain, which affects countries from the Philippines to sub-Saharan Africa. Indonesia, with its growing middle class and aging population, is both a producer of medical graduates and a destination for medical tourism flowing to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Key questions concern curriculum decolonization, accreditation harmonization within ASEAN, the role of AI and simulation in training, and how to retain professionals in underserved regions while participating in global mobility.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Masterclass and International Conference on the History of Medicine in Indonesia (HOMI) 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

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Lessons

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Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

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Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

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Country dossier

Country dossier

Indonesia September 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Masterclass and International Conference on the History of Medicine in Indonesia (HOMI) 2026

Sep 23–26, 2026Surabaya, IndonesiaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Local Knowledge in a Global Perspective · Epidemics Without Borders · Transnational Circulation of Medical Knowledge · Public Health Ethics and Policy · Gender, Body Care, and Mental Health · Indonesia's Contribution to Global Health · Healing, Faith, and Science Across Cultures · Medical Education and Global Professionals

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Indonesia

As the host nation, IDN is central to the conference's theme, offering a rich historical context for the study of medicine.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Local Knowledge in a Global Perspective

Key players

Epidemics Without Borders

Key players

Transnational Circulation of Medical Knowledge

Key players

Public Health Ethics and Policy

Key players

Gender, Body Care, and Mental Health

Key players

Indonesia's Contribution to Global Health

Key players

Healing, Faith, and Science Across Cultures

Key players

Medical Education and Global Professionals

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Masterclass and International Conference on the History of Medicine in Indonesia (HOMI) 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

India's 131st Amendment Bill

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Mifepristone Ruling Sparks 2026 Political Tug

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Indonesia September 2026

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

The 4th Journal of Central Banking Law and Institutions International Conference (JCLI2026)

6th International Conference on Governance, Public Administration, and Social Science (ICoGPASS 2026)

ISRM Indonesia Conference 2026

FPCI Public Discussion: Mid-Year Geopolitical and Economic Outlook 2026

IFAR Consortium Annual Conference 2026

Young Public Diplomacy Summit 2026 Indonesia

Frequently asked questions