Idham Bachtiar Setiadi, Ph.D. memadukan kesarjanaan, kebijakan, dan praktik kemaritiman. Doktor Kajian Asia Tenggara dari National University of Singapore (disertasi tentang heritagisasi Borobudur), ia turut menyusun Undang-Undang Pemajuan Kebudayaan dan merancang program Jalur Rempah semasa di Direktorat Jenderal Kebudayaan. Kini, melalui Yayasan Suar Bahri Kultura, ia membaca laut sebagai arena strategis tempat warisan, tata kelola, dan diplomasi budaya bertaut dengan realitas geofisik negara kepulauan terbesar di dunia — latar yang membawanya menjadi Senior Fellow pada Klaster Riset Stratejik dan Global SPPB UI.
Idham Bachtiar Setiadi, Ph.D. brings together scholarship, policy, and maritime practice. A doctor of Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore (with a dissertation on the heritagisation of Borobudur), he helped draft the Law on the Advancement of Culture and designed the Spice Routes (Jalur Rempah) programme during his tenure at the Directorate General of Culture. Today, through the Suar Bahri Kultura Foundation, he reads the sea as a strategic arena where heritage, governance, and cultural diplomacy intersect with the geophysical reality of the largest archipelagic state of the world — the background that has brought him on as a Senior Fellow in the Strategic and Global Research Cluster at GSSD UI.