Received Sylff fellowship in 2007
Academic Supervisor: Dr. Benjamin Soares and Dr. Anna Peterson
Current Affiliation: Gadjah Mada University
Najiyah received the SYLFF Fellowship in 2007 and, in 2008, a SYLFF
Research Abroad (SRA) grant for her master’s thesis research in Turkey, hosted by Ankara University. There, she engaged with Prof. Ersin Onulduran—whom she befriended on Facebook, though they never met in person. From this research abroad experience, she published a travelogue titled Finding Rumi: An Indonesian Girl’s Adventure in Turkey. The book blends elements of fieldnotes, reflections from her thesis on women’s spirituality, and her personal search for the meaning of life. In 2009, she joined the SYLFF BABA Retreat in Beijing, where she met many other SYLFF fellows and expanded her network.
She earned her Ph.D. in August 2024 from the University of Florida with a dissertation titled Tropical Islam: Indigeneity, Religion, Environment, and Gender Relations in Indigenous-Muslim Communities in Indonesia, which explored the intersections of indigeneity (adat), religion, environmental ethics, and gender dynamics in Indigenous Muslim communities. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Technology (specializing in food science and microbiology) and a master’s degree in Religious Studies (focusing on women’s spirituality), both from Gadjah Mada University. Her research interests include science and religion, Indigenous traditions, foodways, art and spirituality/religion, and environmental movements such as permaculture, agroecology, natural farming, and other creative ecological initiatives. Currently, Najiyah serves at the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies (CRCS), Gadjah Mada University, where she assists in developing research proposals, teaches environmental ethics, supervises master’s theses, and organizes public talk series such as Epistemological Dialogue: Science, Religion, and Indigenous Tradition; Green Energy: Science and Tradition’s Perspective; and The Dynamics of Gender Movements in Indonesia. She is also a consultant of Yadema, an Indonesian organization affiliated with Globethics, an international NGO based in Switzerland. Yadema focuses on promoting and developing ethical leadership across various fields, as well as fostering a society grounded in integrity, fairness, and accountability.
Academic Achievements, Social Engagement Initiatives
She has been awarded multiple competitive research grants, including the Dissertation Research Grant from the Center for Global Islamic Studies at the University of Florida (2024) and a Research Travel Grant from the Department of Religion at UF (2022). Her doctoral program at the University of Florida was funded by a Fulbright Scholarship (2017–2020). She was also the recipient of an Erasmus Plus Fellowship for research mobility at Radboud University in the Netherlands (2017). Beyond research, she actively engages in programs that connect scholarship with public involvement, such as the Fulbright–National Geographic Sciencetelling Bootcamp Fellowship (2019), the Grant Writing Workshop Series at UF’s Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere (2023), and the International Institute of Islamic Thought Summer Student Program (2018). Her intellectual commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue is further demonstrated through participation in the University of Virginia’s Summer Institute on Religion, Environment, and Indigenous Studies (2023). In 2025, she also initiated an eco-walking tour—a mindful walk combined with trash collection—to raise awareness about environmental ethics.
Brief Summary of Support Program Activities
She was selected as an SLI awardee for her project Eco-English Conversation Club: Fostering Ecological Literacy Through Language Learning—a youth-centered initiative combining environmental education with English learning in a relaxed, informal setting. The project not only addresses local waste issues but also responds to a broader global concern: the crisis of imagination surrounding climate change.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/najiyah-martiam-037123356/
https://www.instagram.com/najiyah.jim/
