Remco Raben (born in 1962) studied history in Leiden and obtained his PhD with a study of ethnic relations in early modern colonial cities in Asia. As a post-doctoral student at Utrecht University, he researched the history of Dutch Indonesians.
Between 1997 and 2008, he worked as a senior researcher at the NIOD, contributing to the research programmes ‘Rethinking Regionalism. Changing horizons in Indonesia, 1950s-2000s’ and ‘From the Dutch East Indies to Indonesia. The reordering of Indonesian society 1930-1960’. He has been associate professor of the History of International Relations section of Utrecht University’s History and Art History department since 2008. He is also professor of colonial and postcolonial literature and cultural history at the University of Amsterdam. For many years, he served as a senior advisor for the Victims of Persecution (1940-1945) Benefits Act. He contributed to the creation of the exhibitions ‘Nederlanders, Japanners, Indonesiërs’ (Rijksmuseum, 1999), ‘Beyond the Dutch’ (Centraal Museum, 2009) and ‘Revolusi!’ (Rijksmuseum, 2021). He has published dozens of books and articles on the early modern and modern history of South and South-East Asia, Indonesia, and imperialism and colonial culture in the Netherlands.