Traditionally seen as the gateway to the country’s eastern parts, Makassar is today the bustling capital of South Sulawesi province. The city’s history as a bustling entrepôt dates to the sixteenth century when Arabs, Chinese, (ethnic Chinese) Malays, and Europeans gathered seasonally to trade in luxury products from the east, including Maluku. With a population of  around 1.5 million in 2019, Makassar is one of Indonesia’s largest cities along with Jakarta, Medan, and Surabaya. The project will focus on the relatively new, often ambivalent claims to the city and to a visible public presence as Chinese among Makassar’s ethnic Chinese population that have emerged since Suharto’s downfall. Today the descendants of different Chinese groups, representing one of the largest concentrations in Indonesia, are opening Mandarin language schools (never the main language among Indonesia’s Chinese), rehabilitating temples, organizing events like the International Peranakan (creolized Indonesian-Chinese) conference in 2015, visibly performing Chineseness. Under the 1967 ban in Indonesia on expressions of Chineseness as conveyed, for instance, by religion, language, personal and family names that was lifted in 2001, being Chinese became synonymous with being low-profile and invisible. Besides the diversity of the Makassar’s Chinese population, the project will pay special attention to intergenerational differences in the experience of ‘being Chinese’ and to perceptions and negotiations of (in)visibility. PhD/Postdoc Researcher: to be decided.