About
This platform is a research repository and archive of collective resilience, accessible to the public in Poso, throughout Indonesia, and internationally.
The research is a final studio project for an MA Research Architecture 2025/2026 at the Centre for Research Architecture (CRA), Goldsmiths University, University of London developed by Eliesta Handitya, and commenced in close collaboration and consultation with Institut Mosintuwu, a civic organisation in Tentena city, Poso, Central Sulawesi–which focused on the advocacy for women in the post-conflict era, and the collective struggle against land/water extractivism in Poso.
Its primary objective is to amplify the local community’s resistance to the ongoing slow violence enacted by mega-hydrodam extractivism, which has been frontierising the Lake Poso hydroecologies–the river, lake, and its surrounding community–since 2003 and that is expanded up to this day.
Eliesta Handitya
An independent researcher, editor, and writer who has been walking across interdisciplinary practices. Eliesta graduated in Cultural Anthropology from Universitas Gadjah Mada (2021) and trained as a spatial researcher (2025-2026) in MA Research Architecture at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work brings together ethnography, community facilitation, and visual methodologies to investigate how infrastructural development disrupts/destroys the rights of human and more-than-human life.
More about Eliesta Handitya ↗Institut Mosintuwu
Grassroot civil society organisation, with the aim of promoting peace and socioecological justice in the post-conflict area of Poso Regency, Central Sulawesi. The organisation were formed through deep concern on the violent conflict which perpetrated through the portraying inter-religion conflict to legitimise the conflict, whilst the conflict itself is sustained through the political-economic interest that lay behind the conflict. These interests have shaped patterns of natural resource governance that have often excluded poor and marginalised communities, especially grassroots women.
The organisation was formed of individuals from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds in Poso Regency, reflecting its commitment to inclusivity and collective action. The name Mosintuwu comes from the Pamona language, spoken by one of Indigenous groups in Poso means, “to work together”.
More about Institut Mosintuwu ↗Collaborators
- Eliesta HandityaMA Research Architecture, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London
- All team of Institut Mosintuwu
- Lian GogaliInstitut Mosintuwu
- Pian SiruyuInstitut Mosintuwu
- Yoanes LithaInstitut Mosintuwu
- And the entire ecosystem of Poso lake and river
Thanks to
- Aliansi Penjaga Danau Poso (APDP) / Lake Poso Guardian Alliance
- The community members in Meko, Peura, Sulewana, and Pamona
- Community members of Sekolah Perempuan/ Women’s School, Institut Mosintuwu
- Community members of Sekolah Pembaharu Desa/ Village Reform School, Institut Mosintuwu
- The Institut Mosintuwu team
- Kurniawan Bandjolu
- Solidaritas Perempuan (SP) Sintuwu Raya Poso
- Putri Permata Sari
- Meivy Andriani Larasati
AI acknowledgement
Website development
I acknowledge the use of Claude AI (https://claude.ai) to help visualise the spatial research datasets into coding work, by providing a prototype for interface and visual assets that all are created by myself. I also used Claude AI to translate community testimonies from Bahasa Indonesia into English. Afterward, I carefully edited and reviewed each translation to make sure they truly reflect the community’s voice. I plan to update all manually translated testimonies in the near future.
Report writing
I acknowledge the use of Grammarly Proofreader (https://app.grammarly.com/) to proofread my report writing, maintain the grammatical structure of this critical essay, and ensure readability for the audience. After the first proofreading, I deeply copyedited and reviewed every paragraph in a final draft to make sure the writing reflects my own voice and perspective.
Situating myself in the research toward AI usage
In this, with the highest respect for water bodies as the primary knowledge holders of this research, I acknowledge this project has significantly used water resources to support the visualisation of this spatial research. I acknowledge that AI requires a large amount of water to run data centers worldwide. This section is a critical turning point in my research, not only to reflect my positionality as a researcher but also to show how I position myself as someone who are trapped in the capitalistic system, one who sustains the process on creating world’s water as frontier and sacrifice zone– the issues that has become central to my project.
This research, hence, is not a ‘result’ of the MA project. Instead, it is a starting point for me to rethink, renavigate, and reassess how I approach my further research, on how to think with water while conducting the research on the topic of environment, particularly the waters. What I have learned the most from this project is that the most important of the research is how to situate water and the living ecologies as integral to our physical and psychological bodies, and as part of its primary method itself.