Jessica Marpaung is an academic and Head of the International Law Department at Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH), Jakarta. She has over 10 years teaching experience in Human Rights, International Law, Constitutional Law, and Torts. Jessica received her LLB from UPH and her LLM from Harvard. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice where she is a recipient of an Australia Award scholarship. In this post, she sets out a research and teaching agenda which interrogates local articulations of international human rights principles.
Why did you decide to become an academic and why did you decide to specialise in local articulations of international human rights principles?
I consider myself fortunate to have been exposed to different ways of thinking about legal systems from early on. My undergraduate years in Indonesia were spent studying Indonesian law in English, which meant that even as I was learning national doctrines, I was constantly aware of how the law was positioned in relation to international frameworks. The relationship between Indonesian law and international law is not always a smooth fit. Navigating between the national and the international required more than just translation of words; it demanded translation of concepts, assumptions, and values. I remember sitting at my desk late at night, with my laptop open to multiple tabs, trying to work out how to render certain Indonesian legal concepts into English. Works like “Sriro’s Desk Reference of Indonesian Law” have attempted this with great effort, but it remains a constant struggle because so many concepts are deeply rooted in cultural and political realities that resist neat or literal equivalence.
That early experience shaped both my curiosity and my caution. I became fascinated by the question of how global legal principles take root in local soil, and sometimes, how they fail to. This has become the central concern of my current PhD research, which examines sexual violence in Indonesian universities as a lens for understanding how international norms gain meaning in very specific cultural and political contexts.
Undertaking my PhD thesis in Australia on international women’s rights principles, I again find myself moving between legal worlds. My master’s degree at Harvard in the United States trained me, albeit with much struggle, to understand the workings of the common law. This has given me a personal fondness for both systems and a deep appreciation for the discipline, creativity, and humility that comes with studying them in higher education. I believe that in an increasingly globalised world, we all oscillate between international principles and local contexts, whether we are conscious of it or not. For legal academics, this oscillation is not a distraction from the law, it is the work of the law.
Please introduce us to your academic role and your faculty. How does your law school and university fit in the higher education landscape in your country?
Indonesian higher education is rich in variety, with public and private universities, secular and religious institutions, long established faculties and new entrants. In my more than 10 years teaching at Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH), a private Christian university located in the satellite city of Tangerang in a predominantly Muslim region, I had a vantage point into how an institution navigates identity and inclusion.
UPH has worked to meet international standards of legal education, preparing students to engage meaningfully in global legal discourse while remaining deeply rooted in the values, histories, and realities of Indonesian society. The process is never mechanical. I have sat in faculty discussions where we debated whether adopting a certain international practice would enrich our curriculum or quietly erase something essential to our local context. That balancing act is never static. It requires constant reflection on which global practices can be adopted as they are, which must be adapted, and how to ensure that in pursuing an outward looking vision, we do not lose sight of the needs of our own communities.
Tell us about the student body at your institution. How does a typical law student see the world around them and what challenges and opportunities does this bring to teaching?
In some metropolitan universities such as UPH, students benefit from wider access to resources, including language training, technology, and global networks. These opportunities can open doors to international legal conversations and broaden perspectives. However, at the same time, these resources may create an inadvertent distance from the everyday realities experienced by peers in campuses that are more locally embedded, where different challenges and priorities shape the study of law.
Additionally, I have observed a growing awareness among many students that the barrier between the national and the international is thinning. They follow global legal developments, take part in international moot courts and model United Nations conferences, and are eager to prove that they can stand alongside peers from any jurisdiction. This is indeed a positive sign, as it shows a hunger to learn and to exist confidently in international spaces.
Yet with this comes the challenge, and the opportunity, for students to think critically about the frameworks they engage with. In an era when the decolonisation of legal education is increasingly discussed, Indonesian students are well-placed to ask: how do we participate in global conversations without losing sight of our own legal traditions, histories, and social realities?
This is not only a matter of national pride, but of reclaiming the substance of justice itself and ensuring that the principles we adopt truly resonate with Indonesia’s lived realities rather than reproducing external frameworks. Students must avoid importing concepts uncritically and instead adapt and transform them in ways that serve justice in their own context. I often hear students undermine the importance of legal transplantation or casually compare legal systems without knowing their historical and political background. These moments remind me that part of legal education is not only to expose students to other systems, but to equip them to understand the conditions that make each system what it is.
Indonesia’s legal landscape itself is unique and fascinating. It is a civil law system derived from Dutch colonial law, now undergoing significant reforms to keep pace with contemporary developments. In this rapidly shifting terrain, I believe law students should not only master doctrine but also develop a deeper awareness of justice, seeing how law interacts with politics, history, and power, and recognising that their role in shaping legal reform is both a technical and an ethical responsibility.
What are the connections between your teaching ethos and your research?
For me, this balance between principle and practice discussed in the classroom is not just a theoretical issue. In my research on campus sexual violence, I have seen how difficult it is to turn legal ideals into real change on the ground. The campus sexual violence regulation, introduced in 2021, was an important step forward, setting out rules for prevention, reporting, and protection of victims. But the regulation also became a flashpoint for political and moral debate, particularly over the meaning of consent. Supporters viewed the regulation as a crucial safeguard against abuse of power, while critics argued that it encouraged immorality and eroded social values.
The controversy revealed more than differing moral positions. It exposed the ways in which legal texts are mediated by political interests, cultural anxieties, and institutional priorities. Even after 2022, when the Supreme Court rejected a petition to annul the consent provision and clarified that the regulation does not legalise extramarital relations (through Decision No. 34 P/HUM/2022), which many regard as inconsistent with Indonesian moral and national values, but rather seeks to protect victims of sexual violence, implementation across universities has remained uneven. For some, the regulation represents a genuine instrument of reform, while for others, it functions primarily as a compliance mechanism to maintain accreditation.
And how does your research connect to the national political landscape in Indonesia?
The tensions surrounding the sexual violence regulation mirror a broader truth: universities do not exist outside politics. In recent years, debates over military reform, historical memory, and freedom of expression have reminded us that the campus is a contested space. While some universities protect open dialogue, others discourage political demonstration altogether.
The campus as a contested space is not disconnected from my research. Implementing policies on sexual violence in universities is as much about navigating political currents and embedded social values as it is about enforcing rules. For academics, this environment demands both caution and creativity. Teaching law is not just about delivering doctrine, it is about equipping students to see the forces that shape the law, and to ask who benefits and who is left out.
Sometimes, what is most dangerous is not overt censorship but a quiet culture of disengagement, where critical questions are never voiced. It calls to mind Daniel Simons’ well known selective attention experiment, in which observers, intent on counting basketball passes, frequently failed to register the unexpected presence of a person in a gorilla suit moving through the scene. The experiment is a vivid illustration of how an overly narrow focus can render us blind to the larger realities unfolding around us.
What have you learned from your time at UNSW and what do you love about being an academic?
My experience at UNSW, in conversation with scholars from many countries, has affirmed how much we share across contexts. We are all grappling with how to teach law in times of rapid political change, and how to prepare students for a legal world that is at once global and deeply local.
For me, the most rewarding part of being an academic is that I am always learning. Even when I lecture, I feel like a student, continually challenged by new perspectives. This humility is essential; it reminds me that legal education is not about producing perfect answers, but about cultivating the capacity to keep asking better questions.
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