The Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA) of the Republic of Indonesia is planning a scholarship programme to strengthen the capacity of Islamic higher education institutions (HEIs) and their lecturers. The scholarship, known as “Program 5000 Doktor” or ‘5000 PhD Programme’, is for lecturers of Islamic HEIs (e.g. UIN, IAIN) across Indonesia. They can choose to go to university in Indonesia or overseas. The current budgetary cycle of this scholarship programme ends in 2019, however there is a commitment to extend the programme until 2024. MoRA has to-date only disbursed 344 out of allocated 5000 scholarships (May 2018).

To help candidates in planning their applications for PhDs, MoRA would like to develop a sub-scholarship programme under “the 5000 PhD” in partnership with UK universities (a customised programme). MoRA has developed a similar approach with both Australia and France. This customised programme with the UK will initially focus on “Islam and South East Asia”. This is an umbrella topic that needs to be broken down into different fields of study, for example study of Islamic literary text on Islam in Indonesia (philology).

The partnerships between MoRA and the UK universities will need to be formalised. An MoU is the most common form of document used in Indonesia for such a purpose. The British Council will facilitate communication between the UK universities and MoRA by first organising a two-day meeting in the British Council's London office on 29^th and 30^th August 2018.

For more information about the meeting and programme, please see the attached document.