| Hilde Janssen (1959) is a journalist en anthropologist. For the last twenty years she has been living in Asia, working as a correspondent for several Dutch media. She is also been active as a researcher and consultant in the development sector and in journalism. While based in Jakarta, she initiated a research project on comfort women in 2007 that resulted in two books, a photo exhibition and a documentary film in 2010. At present she is living in The Netherlands, working as a freelance journalist, researcher and consultant.
Mid 2011 she joined the VPRO film team of the Van Dis in Indonesia documentary series as a researcher and local producer in Indonesia. Afterwards, in early 2012, Hilde was assigned by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) to interview Dutch and Indonesian scientists involved in several SPIN research programmes. In August 2012 a new edition of the Dutch pocket travel guide 'Te Gast in Indonesië' was launched, of which Hilde was the editor and main contributor.
Hilde trained as a child and youth care worker, after which she took an MA in Social Anthropology at the University of Nijmegen (1988), including field research in a fishing village in northern Spain. Having completed a number of research assignments on work in the informal sector in the Netherlands, she moved to Indonesia in 1991 where she worked as a freelance researcher and consultant with a focus on gender & development.
In 1993, Hilde moved to India and gradually shifted her professional activities to journalism. In India, she started her career in journalism as a correspondent for several Dutch media, including research and production work for the Dutch and Belgian producers of the television programme Traceless. In 2000, Hilde returned to Indonesia where she continued to reside and work till early 2011. In Indonesia, she was the foreign correspondent for the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad and several magazines, but she was -and still is- also active as a researcher and writer, occasional taking up research and advisory assignments as a consultant in the development sector.
Working experience
As a journalist Hilde’s main assignments in South and Southeast Asia have been on political developments, on social and economic issues, and increasingly on major disasters and related relief and rehabilitation activities, such as the Gujarat earthquake (2002), the Indian ocean tsunami (from 2004), and earthquake in Pakistan (2005). Other major issues she regularly covers include government reforms, poverty alleviation, education, child labour, gender issues, human rights, international cooperation, displaced people and ethnic conflicts, natural disasters and displaced people.
From December 2004, Hilde has been researching and reporting on the impact of the tsunami especially in Aceh, Indonesia. Together with the Indonesian photographer Mohamad Iqbal she researched and produced a series of reports on the progress of reconstruction activities financed by the Netherlands’ Government. This resulted in publications in printed media and online, as well as a photo exhibition.
In 2007 she initiated the Comfort Women project in collaboration with the Dutch photographer Jan Banning, for whom she already conducted research in Indonesia for his project Traces of War. Both projects focus on the suppressed past of victims the Japanese occupation. While Traces of War looks at the male forced labour, the comfort women project highlights the hidden history of forced prostitution. During two years Hilde travelled the archipelago in search for former comfort women, willing to share their story and be photographed by Jan Banning, who accompanied her later on during several visits. Hilde’s book ‘Schaamte en Onschuld. Het verdrongen Oorlogsverleden van troostmeisjes in Indonesië’ has been published by Nieuw Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She also contributed the introduction and interview fragments to Jan Banning’s photobook ‘Comfortwomen/Troostmeisjes’, as well as the text of the photo-exhibition. The exhibition is now traveling simultaneously in the Netherlands and Indonesia, for which Hilde is regularly invited as a speaker and lecturer.
Hilde is also active as a consultant in the development sector. In 2001 she was a member of the evaluation team for India’s main women’s education programme Mahila Samakya. In 2005 she researched the impact of the post-tsunami interventions in the fishery sector in Aceh, followed by several other assignments on micro-finance, coastal rehabilitation and disaster risk management in the tsunami affected coastal areas, mostly for Dutch donor agencies.
As a result of her work as a journalist and consultant Hilde Janssen has excellent research and reporting skills, with a keen eye for human interest stories. She is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, English and German, and also speaks fairly good Spanish.
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