Krisharyanto Umbu Deta is an Administrative Assistant for the Repatriation Futures grant program at the Capps Center. He is a doctoral student in Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara, supported by the Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education. His research focuses on indigenous religion, law, and the state, with particular attention to the Marapu indigenous religion in his homeland of Sumba, Indonesia. Umbu recently published the book chapter "Marapu Indigenous Economy: Ritual Agriculture in between Modern Disenchantment and Religious Ecology in Sumba, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia" in Religion, Decolonization, and the Planetary Community: Voices from the Indonesian Archipelago (Routledge Studies in Religion, 2026).
Umbu has conducted fieldwork in Sumba with support from a Preliminary Research Grant from the UCSB Department of Religious Studies and an Overseas Travel Grant from the American-Indonesian Cultural & Educational Foundation (AICEF). His scholarship also extends to public engagement through the Intersectoral Collaboration for Indigenous Religions (ICIR), an Indonesia-based research and advocacy institution. As part of this work, he published the monograph Citizenizing in the Shared Home: ICIR Eight Years after the 2017 Constitutional Court Decision (2025), which examines advocacy for indigenous religions in Indonesia.
Umbu joined the Capps Center in Summer 2026.