Vincent Houben is professor of Southeast Asian History and Society, Institute of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He studied history and Indonesian languages at Leiden University. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1987 and became a lecturer of Indonesian history at the same university. In 1997 he moved to Germany. His areas of research are modern Southeast Asian history (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), colonial history, labour history, memory studies and area studies theory. He published several books and over ninety scholarly articles.