Zubaidah Djohar

A researcher, trainer, humanitarian worker and most famously, a poet. ZDj is the founder and director of the Timang Research Center and has been a fellow researcher at the Aceh Institute since 2007. She is widely published on a range of issues that seek to unpack the impacts of conflict on women in Aceh and the role of women in contemporary society. Subjects include: the Role of Aceh Women Organization in Conflict Resolution; Corruption and its Impact on Women’s life in Aceh; Questioning peace: is there a justice for women the victim of sexual assaults; Women Roles Post-election; Once Misogynists interpreting Gender; Women in Aceh Community: Understanding Contemporary Issues; Aceh, Women and Equality.

ZDj previously also coordinated capacity-building initiatives on issues of conflict resolution, leadership, public speaking, gender mainstreaming, and health reproduction. She has worked as a consultant for several projects which seek to empower women in her community such as: women and customary law mechanisms in Aceh; gendered-perspective research workshops; women and micro-finance; and cross-cutting themes of anti-corruption, gender equality, environmental sustainability, and peace building. She has also worked at the International Center for Transitional Justice. In her new book of poems on women and peace in Aceh, Coming Home, A Fight Against Forgetting (2012), she raises the importance of remembering the violence and the sufferings of the conflict survivors, especially for those of women and children, and promotes the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. ZDj holds a degree from the graduate gender studies program at the Universitas Indonesia.¹

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