Jessica Soedirgo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam where she is a member of the Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance research group. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Studies, Georgetown University. She holds a Ph.D from the University of Toronto.

Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of anti-minority violence and repression. Her research agenda is motivated by two related questions: 1) Why and how do minorities become victims of violence and repression?; and 2) How do minorities respond to violence and repression and why do they respond the ways they do? Empirically, I look at ethnic and religious minorities in Indonesia. She also writes on qualitative methodology, particularly with regards to fieldwork. 

Her work has been published in Citizenship Studies, Southeast Asia Research, Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, and PS: Political Science and Politics and has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Ontario Government, and others.   

Research methods

• Qualitative methods
• Fieldwork
• Interviewing
• Archival research

Research grants & honours

• Veni (2024) - Resisting Assimilation: Minority Responses to Coercive Nation Building in Postcolonial Indonesia
• Aaron Wildavsky Dissertation Award in Religion and Politics (2022), American Political Science Association

BA

• Violence and Security: Paradigms and Debates
• Southeast Asian Politics

MA

• Political Violence