Sari Damar Ratri

Sari is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Research (IFAR), Monash University, Indonesia. She earned a PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in Medical Anthropology and Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. Her master’s research focused on harm reduction programs in Jakarta. Through ethnographic research, she questioned the promise of productivity for individuals transitioning from injecting illegal substances to legal substitution therapies. Her thesis, accompanied by a short film based on the project, revealed a contrasting reality: rather than improving productivity, many of these individuals found themselves trapped in cycles of dependency and social marginalization.

For her doctoral studies, Sari conducted research on the island of Flores in East Nusa Tenggara. She initially worked as a research consultant for the Australia-Indonesia Partnership on maternal and neonatal health programs. While she originally planned to study efforts to reduce maternal and newborn deaths, her focus shifted to stunting as global priorities transitioned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Her dissertation examined how stunting impacts women, particularly in their socially prescribed roles as mothers. She explored how historical views on women’s roles in nation-building, combined with the rise of medical sciences such as nutrition and pediatrics during Indonesia’s early independence period, have shaped cultural and social expectations of motherhood in contemporary Indonesia. Her work highlights how these expectations often position women as both the ideal and the enforcers of “good motherhood.”

Sari’s research emphasizes the politics behind health statistics and metrics, exploring how these tools are used to advance specific agendas while concealing deeper meanings. She employs ethnographic methods to connect the theoretical concerns of medical anthropology with critical development studies and science and technology studies, aiming to uncover the complex social and cultural dimensions of health and development.

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