Roberta Zollo Successfully Defends her PhD Dissertation

20 May 2025

Photo: CSMC

Congratulations to Roberta Zollo on defending her doctoral dissertation and completing her PhD in Indonesian and Malay Studies! The viva voce examination took place on 19 May 2025.

Roberta Zollo wrote her dissertation, which is entitled A Study of Unpublished Manuscripts of the Batak People of North Sumatra: Selected Parbuhitan Texts, on the tree-bark manuscripts (pusthaa) produced by the Toba Batak people of North Sumatra during the pre-colonial period. She analysed one particular typology of the existing pustaha, the parbuhitan manuscripts, texts containing instructions for divination by slaughtering a buffalo as a ceremonial offering during some sacrificial ceremonies. Her study also looks into some social circumstances and performative aspects of this ritual. Combining philology, linguistics, and anthropology, her thesis provides a comprehensive catalogue and analysis of the parbuhitan manuscripts.

Since October 2024, she has been part of a research project to reappraise the provenance of Indonesian objects in the collections of various ethnographic and natural history museums in Lower Saxony, which coordinated by the Museumsverband für Niedersachsen und Bremen and funded by the German Lost Art Foundation.