Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy
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Will Derks
In 2003, Will Derks joined NIMD as Policy Officer for Asia/Indonesia – a twist in his career which constitutes a unique and quite unexpected opportunity to continue his professional interest in a country and a region that he has held dear for many years. Since the Arabic Spring in the beginning of 2011, Will started a programme in Egypt.
In 1983, Will Derks graduated at the Catholic University of Nijmegen (Dutch Language and Literature and Comparative Literature). After working as a teacher at a secondary education level, he became a Ph.D. student at Leiden State University, where, in 1994, he defended his thesis on singers of tales in the Indonesian province of Riau (The Feast of Storytelling; On Malay Oral Tradition).
Subsequently he worked as a post-doc at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS, Leiden). At the same time he was affiliated to the Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Oceania of Leiden University. In both capacities he taught, and did research, on modern Indonesian literature.
Later still, he became consultant at Taalbox Communicatie, a communication bureau in Arnhem that works for companies such as DSM, UPC, KLM et cetera.
