Monash Anthropology News
Two Monash anthropology researchers win Endeavour Research Fellowships
In 2010, two Monash anthropology researchers will take up Endeavour Research Fellowships to conduct research abroad. Each Fellowship is worth $23,500.
Dr Lejla Voloder’s research is a comparative analysis of how differences in the practice of secularism affect migrant inclusion in Australia and Turkey, countries experiencing religious revitalisation and increasing immigration. This builds on her doctoral work on how migrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina experience citizenship and claim forms of belonging in Australia. The new project compares modes of social inclusion in Australia and Turkey, both countries maintaining secular principles, yet subsuming religion in their civic culture. The focus is on how Bosnian immigrants in Turkey engage with Islam as a significant and increasing presence in civic culture and how this impacts on their intentions and ability to claim belonging to this secular state.
Dr Sara Niner’s research is on 'Sacred Cloth in Timor-Leste Today'. This is a collaborative project with the National Directorate of Culture (NDC), Ministry of Education, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (RDTL) for preliminary research into the contemporary significance of iconographic traditional textiles, termed tais or ikat. The research will occur at several sites of significance in Timor-Leste. In Timor, woven textiles are an expression of traditional knowledge and represent a narration of the territory's indigenous history and belief system. The research sets out to document the life of the artisans, their artefacts and the customary practices surrounding weaving. It also hopes to explore the significance of these artefacts and practices in the reinscribing of tradition and community life, which appears to be experiencing a revitalisation within Timorese society that is tied to national independence and a conscious assertion of ‘cultural identity politics’.
The Endeavour Award scheme is the Australian Government's internationally competitive, merit-based scholarship program providing opportunities for Australians to undertake study, research and professional development abroad and for citizens of the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Europe and the Americas to do the same in Australia. Those chosen for an Endeavour Award are exceptional people who have the potential to become leaders in their field.
More information on the Endeavour Award Scheme Applications for the second round of the 2010 Endeavour Awards are now open and will close 31 January 2010.
New academic appointment to Anthropology in 2010
From mid 2010, Dr Julian Millie joins the teaching and research academic staff in Anthropology at Monash University. Dr Millie is currently completing an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for the project entitled 'Preaching Islam in Indonesia: Publics, Performers and Politics'. He spent six months of 2008 in Bandung doing fieldwork for this project. Starting in semester 2, 2010, Julian will teach the unit INT2075/3075 Faith in the Future: Religion and Spirituality in a Globalising World.
XANANA: Leader of the Struggle for Independent Timor-Leste - launch of the new book by Sara Niner
Thursday 10th December 2009 (Human Rights Day) 6-8pm
Bella Union Trades Hall, crn Lygon, Russell and Victoria Sts, Carlton
Launched by Terry Bracks
Timorese and World Music by Zelda Da
For information about the author and the book go to http://saraniner.blogspot.com/
To purchase the book go to http://www.scholarly.info/purchase.htm
Join Sara and Sian Prior for a Book Reading, 13 December, 2-4pm, St. Kilda Library.
Faculty of Arts 2008 Postgraduate Publication Award
Dr Lejla Voloder (Anthropology, School PSI) has won the Faculty of Arts 2008 Postgraduate Publication Award.
Announcing the award, Joel Crotty (Associate Dean, Graduate Research, Faculty of Arts) said that the list of nominees for the 2008 Postgraduate Publication Prize was particularly strong. After much deliberation the panel, consisting of Alison Tokita (LCL), Natalie Doyle (MEEUC) and Joel Crotty (Chair, Arts Research Graduate School), found much to praise in the strength of Lejla Voloder's application. Published in "The Australian Journal of Anthropology", a convincing case was made that Voloder's article "Autoethnographic challenges: confronting self, field and home" demonstrated a challenging, innovative methodology in which to encase the ongoing concerns of "insiderness" in the research paradigm.
Congratulations to Lejla Voloder on this outstanding achievement.
Ethnographic Research Methods Course, June 2008
Professor Lenore Manderson, Social Science and Health Research Unit, School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, convenes this annual course in Ethnographic Methods. The course provides theoretical and practical training to researchers wishing to use ethnographic and/or qualitative research methods. Ethnographic research is increasingly common in a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, psychology and public health. This course illustrates how such methods are used in various contexts. Participants gain practical skills, including: using qualitative methods in conjunction with other research methods and study designs; ensuring rigour and validity; developing quantifiable outcomes (a concern for some clinical and other research); and conducting rapid assessments.
The course is aimed at higher degree research students and other researchers in the early stages (who have either recently or not yet begun to collect data), but it is suitable for participants at all stages of the research process. Places are strictly limited.
Matt Tomlinson wins Arts Dean’s Teaching Award
Anthropology’s Matt Tomlinson (in red) was one of the recipients of the Dean’s Teaching Awards in the Faculty of Arts for 2007.
Professor Rae Francis presented the awards for excellence in teaching within the Faculty. Professor Mark Peel, Associate Dean (Teaching), said the awards were an important acknowledgement of the outstanding efforts of teachers within the Faculty:
“As a faculty, we have often been modest — perhaps overly modest — about rewarding our teachers, in part for fear that identifying one excellent teacher might slight all the other excellent teachers. While I share that uncertainty, I also think we need to pay a lot more attention to the hard work that we do as teachers and the contributions that teaching makes to the wider task of academic scholarship. I don’t think we can ever know who might be our best teacher. But we can know that these people (the awardees) are all very good ones, and that they are all characterised by the inventiveness they bring to their teaching,” said Prof Peel.
“I also like to think that we are celebrating how they represent us to our students, and how they exemplify what our students find most valuable in their academic teachers: passion, intellectual excitement and engagement.”
Two research fellows joining Anthropology in 2007
In 2007, Dr Julian Millie and Dr Jemma Purdey are taking up Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowships in Anthropology at Monash University.
- Dr Julian Millie’s project is entitled ‘Preaching Islam: Politics, Performers and Publics in Indonesia’. Julian joins Anthropology, School PSI, from 7 April 2007;
- Dr Jemma Purdey’s project is entitled ‘A study of the Scholarship on Indonesia in Australia and its implications for foreign policy’. Jemma’s fellowship will be held jointly in the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies and the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, from 31 July 2007.
Two research fellows joining Anthropology in 2006
March 2006
From early 2006, Dr Thomas Reuter and Dr Trudy Jacobsen and are taking up research fellowships in Anthropology at Monash University.
Dr Reuter held Australian Research Council Postdoctoral and Queen Elizabeth II Fellowships at the University of Melbourne before joining School PSI at Monash. Together with Greg Acciaioli (UWA), Thomas is working with on an ARC funded project ‘Revitalising Custom (Adat) in Reaction to Decentralisation, Islamisation and Globalisation in Indonesia: Contemporary Social Movements in Bali, Sulawesi and Kalimantan’.
Dr Jacobsen comes to Monash on an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship for her project entitled ‘Sexual contracts in Burma and Cambodia: Intersections of Desire, Duty and Debt’. Trudy joined Monash on 6th March 2006. Her appointment is held jointly with the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies.
Two academic appointments to Anthropology in 2005
July 2005
From mid 2005 Dr John Bradley, formerly of the University of Queensland, and Dr Matt Tomlinson, from the University of Pennsylvania, are joining the academic staff in Anthropology at Monash University. John's appointment is jointly in Anthropology and the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies.