Dr. Jacqueline Vel is senior researcher at the Van Vollenhoven Institute at the University of Leiden, specializing in local governance in Indonesia. She wrote her PhD dissertation “The Uma Economy” on the rules and logics of the local rural economy in Sumba (1994 - updated Indonesian translation in 2010). Research interests include access to justice, agrarian change, and local politics (“Uma Politics” 2008). Since June 2019 she is coordinator of the project “Strengthening legal education in Eastern Indonesia” (NUFFIC-OKP).

Stepanus Makambombu MSc is PhD student at the Development Studies department of Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Indonesia. He is the director of the NGO STIMULANT Institute Sumba, active in advocacy of public policy concerning community development and action research on policy and public services in East Sumba. Currently he leads a Save the Children project in West Sumba, and organised emergency aid for Save the Children after Cyclone Seroja in East Sumba. He cultivates his own rice field in southeast Sumba.

Jacqueline Vel and Stepanus Makambombu co-author publications about access to justice and the role of customary law in land disputes. They are involved in the ARC project ‘Household Vulnerability and the Politics of Social Protection in Indonesia’ as the research team for East Sumba