Geoffrey Robinson

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Geoffrey Robinson

Geoffrey Robinson

Professor Emeritus

Email: robinson@history.ucla.edu

Office: 5361 Bunche Hall

Phone: 310-488-8567

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Biography

Professor Robinson writes and teaches about political violence, genocide, human rights, and US foreign policy, primarily in Southeast Asia.

Robinson earned his BA at McGill and his PhD at Cornell, where he was a student of Benedict Anderson and George Kahin. Before coming to UCLA, he worked for six years at Amnesty International’s Research Department in London, and in 1999 he served as a Political Affairs Officer with the United Nations in East Timor. His major works include: The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali (Cornell, 1995); East Timor 1999: Crimes against Humanity (Elsham & Hak, 2006); “If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die”: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor (Princeton, 2010); and most recently, The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66 (Princeton, 2018). His current projects include a co-authored visual history of the mass violence of 1965-66 in Indonesia, and a study of the “Swedish Connection” to that violence.

Field of Study

South and Southeast Asia, (Genocide studies, Political violence, US foreign policy, Indonesia, East Timor)

Publications

Books & Monographs

Selected Articles & Reports

  • “Half a Century of Genocide and Extermination: Indonesia, 1965-66, East Timor, 1975-99, and West Papua, 1963-2020,” in Ben Kiernan, Wendy Lower, Norman Naimark, and Scott Straus, eds. The Cambridge World History of Genocide. Volume III, Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914-2020. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming, 2020).
  • “A Time to Kill: The Anti-Communist Violence in Indonesia, 1965-66,” in Eve Zucker and Benjamin Kiernan, eds. Mass Violence in Southeast Asia Since 1945. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Monograph Series (forthcoming, 2020).
  • “Fake News: Psy-war and Propaganda in the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66.” The Historian, No. 142, Special Issue on Hidden Histories (Summer, 2019) pp. 18-23.
  • “Debate – The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. 175 (2019), pp. 341-356.
  • “Derailing Justice: The Logic of Serial Human Rights Investigations in East Timor.” In Jens Meierhenrich, ed. Intervention by Other Means: The Law and Practices of International Commissions of Inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (forthcoming, 2019).
  • “‘Down to the Very Roots’ – The Indonesian Army’s Role in the Mass Killings of 1965-66.” In 1965 Today: Living with the Indonesian Massacres, eds. Martijn Eickhoff, Gerry van Klinken and Geoffrey Robinson, eds. Special Issue, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol 19, 3 (2017).
  • “Introduction,” 1965 Today: Living with the Indonesian Massacres, eds. Martijn Eickhoff, Gerry van Klinken and Geoffrey Robinson, eds. Special Issue, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol 19, 3 (2017).
  • “East Timor: Legacies of Violence.” In David Webster, ed., Flowers in the Wall: Truth & Reconciliation in Timor-Leste, Indonesia and Melanesia, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2017.
  • Review of Anja Jetschke. Human Rights and State Security: Indonesia and the Philippines. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. In South East Asia Research, 23, 3 (Fall 2015).
  • “Break the Rules, Save the Records: Human Rights Archives and the Search for Justice in East Timor.” Archival Science, Special Issue, The Antonym of Forgetting, Vol. 14, No. 2 (August 2014) pp. 323-343.
  • “Human Rights History from the Ground Up: The Case of East Timor.” In Steve J. Stern and Scott Straus, eds. The Human Rights Paradox: Universality and Its Discontents. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014, pp. 31-60.
  • “East Timor Ten Years On: Legacies of Violence.” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 70, No.4 (November 2011), pp. 1-15.
  • “East Timor: Legacies of Occupation and Violence.” Canadian Council on Southeast Asian Studies’ Newsletter, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Fall 2010), pp. 11-14.
  •  “Mass Violence in Southeast Asia.” In Itty Abraham, Meredith Weiss, and Edward Newman, eds. Political Violence in South and Southeast Asia. Tokyo and New York: United Nations University Press & International Peace Academy, 2010, pp. 69-90.
  •  “State-Sponsored Violence and Secessionist Rebellions in Asia.” In Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses eds. The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 466-88.
  • “People Power: A Comparative History of Forced Displacement in East Timor,” in Eva Lotta Hedman, ed. Conflict, Violence and Displacement in Indonesia: Dynamics, Patterns, and Experience. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2008, pp. 87-118.
  • “Colonial Militias in East Timor,” in Karl Hack and Rettig Tobias, eds. Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia: The Armed Leviathan. London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 269-301.
  • “If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die,” in Mills and Brunner, eds. The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention. New York: Perseus Books, 2002, pp. 159-184.
  • “The Fruitless Search for a Smoking Gun: Tracing the Origins of Violence in East Timor,” in Freek Colombijn and Thomas Lindblad, eds. Roots of Violence in Indonesia: Contemporary Violence in Historical Perspective. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002, pp. 243-276.
  • “People’s War: Militias in East Timor and Indonesia.” South East Asia Research, School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3 (November 2001), pp. 271-318
  • “Rawan is as Rawan Does: The Origins of Disorder in New Order Aceh.” In Benedict Anderson, ed. Violence and the State in Suharto’s Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2001, pp. 213-242.
  • “Indonesia– On a New Course?” In Muthiah Alagappa, ed. Coercion and Governance: The
  • Declining Political Role of the Military in Asia. Stanford University Press,
    2001, pp.226-256.
  • “Violence in an Era of Reform.” Indonesia, 70 (October 2000).
  • “With UNAMET in East Timor – An Historian’s Personal View.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Special Issue on East Timor, February, 2000.
  • “Learning the Art of Dying: The Origins and Limits of Non-Violence in Burma and East Timor.” In Katrin Goldstein Kyaga, ed. Non-Violence in Asia. Stockholm: Center for Pacific Asia Studies, 1999.
  • “Human Rights in Southeast Asia: Rhetoric and Reality.” In David Wurfel and Bruce Burton, eds. Southeast Asia in the New World Order. London: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
  • “The Post-Coup Massacre in Bali.” In Daniel S. Lev and Ruth McVey, eds., Making Indonesia: Essays on Modern Indonesia. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1996.
  • “Shock Therapy: Restoring Order in Aceh, 1989-1993.” London: Amnesty International, 1993.
  • “Philippines: ‘Disappearances’ in the Context of Counterinsurgency.” London: Amnesty International, 1991.

Awards & Grants

  • Society for Militarty HIstory, Distinguished Book Award                                    2020
  • Raphael Lemkin Book Award, the Institute for the Study of Genocide             2019
  • Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellowship Award, National University of Singapore  2018
  •  UC Pacific Rim Research Program, Faculty Initiative Grant                            2013-15
  • British Library Endangered Archives Programme, Major Research Award      2005-08
  • ACLS/NEH/SSRC, International Area Studies Fellowship                               2002-03
  • UCLA Senate Research Grant        1998-99, 1999-2000, 2001-02, 2002-03, 2007-08
  •  Isaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship                                                  1995-96
  • SSHRC Canada Doctoral Fellowship Award                                                   1983-87
  • Allan Oliver Gold Medal for Economics and Political Science, McGill University 1978
  • MacKenzie Award for Canadian History and Politics, McGill University            1977

Graduate Students

Graduated                                                       Placement

Nhung Tuyet Tran (History)*                          Associate Professor, University of Toronto

Jessica Elkind (History)*                                Associate Professor, San Francisco State University

Christina Firpo (History)*                               Associate Professor, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

Awet Weldemichael (History)*                       Associate Professor, Queen’s University, Canada

Laura Gifford (History)                                   Scholar in Residence, George Fox University

Robert Sierakowski (History)                         Assistant Professor, University of the West Indies-Mona

Rajashree Mazumder (History)                     Assistant Professor, Union College, Schenectady, NY

Terenjit Sevea (History)                                 Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Christopher Bray (History)                             Visiting Professor, Pitzer College

Steve Rodriguez (History)                              Lecturer, Pasadena City College

Melvin Lebe (History)*                                    Ph.D awarded 2012 (retired)

Dahlia Setiyawan (History)*                            Teacher/Head of History, Windward School, Los Angeles

Pearlie Baluyut (Art History)                            Assistant Professor, Cal State San Bernardino

Lene Pederson (Anthropology, USC)              Associate Professor, Central Washington University

Jennifer Esperanza (Anthropology)                 Associate Professor, Beloit College

Brent Luvaas (Anthropology)                           Assistant Professor, Drexel University

Brian Bernards (Asian Lang. and Cultures)     Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

Rebekah Park (Anthropology)                         Applied Anthropologist, ReD Associates, New York

Kimberly Clair (Women’s Studies)                   Lecturer, UCLA and UC Riverside

Marie Berry (Sociology)                                   Assistant Professor, University of Denver

Julie Romain (Art History)                                Assistant Curator for South Asia, LACMA (deceased)

Gustav Brown (Sociology)                               Postdoctoral Fellow, National University of Singapore

Nicole Iturriaga (Sociology)                              Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute, Germany

Saskia Nauenberg (Sociology)                         Humanities Research Program Manager, UC Santa Cruz

Amy Rothschild (Anthropology, UCSD)            Assistant Professor, Ithaca College, NY

Current                                                            Progress to Degree

Caty Husbands (History)*                               ABD/Teaching Fellow, Noel Community Arts School

Otto Stuparitz (Ethnomusicology)                    ABD

*Chair or Co-chair of Doctoral Committee

Degrees

  • Ph.D Cornell University, 1992
  • MA. University of British Columbia, 1982
  • BA. McGill University, 1978