Advancing Public Service Media

Team

Heidi Arbuckle

Program Officer Jakarta

Heidi Arbuckle focuses on media issues in Indonesia from the foundation's Jakarta office. Her grant making supports the production of content representing pluralist and independent perspectives, as well as support for open infrastructure. The goal of her work is to help build an informed and active citizenry across the diverse constituencies of the Indonesian archipelago.

Before joining the Ford Foundation in 2007, Heidi spent 12 years in the creative arts and media sector in Indonesia, where she partnered with a broad range of Indonesian organizations, from the National Commission on Violence Against Women to organic farmers’ cooperatives and progressive punk rock bands.

Her book, "Taring Padi and the Politics of Radical Cultural Practice in Contemporary Indonesia," was published in Indonesia in 2010. She has also taught at the University of Melbourne in the areas of mass media in Indonesia and gender politics in Southeast Asia.

Heidi was born in Australia and has lived nearly half her life in Southeast Asia. She is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia. She has studied Indonesian literature at the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and visual arts at the Indonesian Institute of Art. She holds a bachelor's degree (honours) in anthropology from Curtin University of Technology and is a Ph.D. candidate in gender and postcolonial studies at the University of Melbourne.