Biography

Born and raised in Indonesia, Saiful Bakhri is a graduate student in the UCLA Conservation of Material Culture Ph.D. Program. Through this program, he seeks to address the cultural importance and physical production of traditional materials for conservation treatment to better meet the environmental, social, and cultural needs of non-Western communities and how they can be incorporated into Western practice. His current research focuses on investigating soapnut as a biodegradable surfactant in cleaning Batik, an Indonesian textile that is well-known due to its distinct wax-resist dyeing technique.

Prior to arriving in LA, he worked for three years as a civil servant conservator at the Bali Cultural Heritage Preservation Office, Gianyar, Bali, a technical unit of the Directorate General of Culture of Indonesia responsible for the conservation of cultural heritage in three provinces of Indonesia: Bali, West and East Nusa Tenggara. Aside from being a Ph.D. student, Saiful is an Assistant Coordinator of the ICOM-CC Objects from Indigenous and World Cultures Working Group. He is also a founding member of Institut Konservasi, an organization aimed to improve and provide conservation advocacy, education, training, research, and services of art and cultural materials in Indonesia.

Saiful holds a Master of Cultural Materials Conservation from the University of Melbourne. During this time, he secured two student engagement grants from the university, where he and his colleagues were able to help museums in Bali during the Mount Agung volcanic crises from the end of 2017 to 2018. In 2020, he was awarded Rising Star Award for Young Alumni from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Melbourne and awarded funding from the Australia Awards in Indonesia to run a conservation internship program in Bali. He also holds a Bachelor of Humanities in Archaeology from Universitas Indonesia and is recognized as the only student from his cohort to graduate with Cum Laude predicate.