Merle Calvin Ricklefs (17 July 1943 – 29 December 2019) was an American-born Australian scholar of the history and current affairs of Indonesia. Ricklefs was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on 17 July 1943 and died on 29 December 2019, aged 76. Ricklefs received his Ph.D. with his dissertation titled "Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi (1749-1792)" from Cornell University in 1973, under the supervision of O. W. Wolters. He held positions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, All Souls College, Monash University, the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. He retired from the professorship of Southeast Asian history at the National University of Singapore. He was emeritus professor of history at both the Australian National University and Monash University.

Academic career

Ricklef's publications focused on the history of Mataram, Kartasura, Yogyakarta, Surakarta (locations in Central Java). He also regularly updated his history of Indonesia, A History of Modern Indonesia, ca. 1300 to the present.

Honours and awards

In 1989, Ricklefs was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The Government of Australia awarded him in 2001 the Centenary Medal for "service to Australian society and the humanities in the study of Indonesia". In June 2017, Ricklefs was made a member of the Order of Australia.

Civil and human rights activity

In the early 1980s Ricklefs became deeply involved in education for indigenous Australians, acting as the driving force behind and co-founding the Monash Orientation Scheme for Aborigines, the first bridging program for Aboriginal people in an Australian university. This aimed to prepare Aboriginal students, who suffered from great educational disadvantage, for university study. The scheme was a runaway success and by the time Ricklefs left Monash in 1993 it had been responsible for roughly doubling the number of Aboriginal university graduates. Ricklefs was also involved in the 1980s 'immigration debate' in Australia, which was sparked when his counterpart at the University of Melbourne, Geoffrey Blainey, argued that Australia should limit Asian immigration.

Publications