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Professor Greg Barton

Tel: +61 3 9903 1540
Tel: +61 4 198 71170 (mobile)
Fax: +61 3 9905 2410
Email: Greg.Barton@monash.edu
Room H5.30 (Level 5, Building H)
Building H, Caulfield Campus

Biographical information
Research
Consultancies and public service
Postgraduate supervision
Publications
Recent seminars and public speaking
Media appearances

Biographical information

Qualifications:

1996: PhD (Monash)
1988-95 PhD Program - 1988 to 1992: Commonwealth Postgraduate Research Scholarship, Department of Asian Studies, Monash University; thesis title: The Emergence of Neo-Modernism; a Progressive, Liberal, Movement of Islamic Thought in Indonesia: A Textual Study Examining the Writings of Nurcholish Madjid, Djohan Effendi, Ahmad Wahib and Abdurrahman Wahid 1968-1980.
1984-87: Bachelor of Arts (Honours, First Class), Monash University
1981-83: Aeronautical Engineering, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
1980-81: Rotary Exchange Student to Surat, Gujarat India
1979: South Australian Higher School Certificate, Millicent High School (South Australia) 1975-79: Awarded ‘The Degaris Cup’ for best all round student.

Present Appointment

Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia, Politics program, School of Social and Political Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University

Previous Appointments

2006-2007: Associate Professor, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), Honolulu, Hawaii
2005-2006: Associate Professor, Politics, Deakin University
1997-2004: Senior Lecturer, Religious Studies & Politics, Deakin University, Melbourne and Geelong
1993-1997: Lecturer, Indonesian Studies & Religious Studies, Deakin University, Melbourne and Geelong
1992: Lecturer, Indonesian History and Politics, Victoria College, Toorak, Melbourne
1992: Lecturer in Indonesian language, Australian Defence Force School of Languages, Point Cook Air Base, Melbourne

Greg is the Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia in the Faculty of Arts at Monash. He is based in the Politics stream in the School of Political and Social Inquiry. He is acting Director of the Centre for Islam and the Modern World (CIMOW), Deputy UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations – Asia Pacific, and is active in the Global Terrorism Research Centre (GTReC). For the past twenty years Greg has been active in inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society. The central axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation state. He also has a strong general interest in comparative international politics.

Over the past two decades Greg has undertaken extensive research on Indonesia politics and society, especially of the role of Islam as both a constructive and a disruptive force. Since 2004 he has made a comparative study of progressive Islamic thought in Turkey and Indonesia and is hoping to extend this comparative study to India.

Greg also has a general interest in security studies and human security and a particular interest in counter-terrorism. He is an active member of the Global Terrorism Research Centre (GTReC) at Monash and continues to research Jemaah Islamiyah and other radical Islamist movements in Southeast Asia. He is involved in teaching several counter-terrorism courses each year at the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies (APCSS) in Honolulu and with other institutions and agencies. He joined Monash in January 2007, prior to that he had worked for a year as an Associate Professor at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he continues to have an association as adjunct professor teaching in human security and counter-terrorism courses in Honolulu and in Asia. Before that he was an Associate Professor at Deakin University where had worked since 1993. There he developed and taught courses in the Politics stream on Political Leadership, Global Islamic Politics, and Society and Culture in Contemporary Asia, and earlier, in the Religious Studies stream, on Islam and Christianity. At Monash he teaches Islam and Modernity; Political Islam; Islam in Turkey and Indonesia; and Interfaith relations in the 21st Century in the newly developed Masters of Islamic Studies.

His PhD thesis at Monash in the early 1990s examined the emergence of liberal Islamic thought in the 1970s and 80s in the political context of the Suharto regime; and the social and political consequences of the civil society activism that it gave rise to. In particular it examined the thought and activism of Abdurrahman Wahid, Nurcholish Madjid and Djohan Effendi and anticipated their contribution to democratic transition. This laid the foundations for his later studies of the Wahid presidency and of Islam and civil society. The book demonstrated a link between progressive, neo-modernist Islamic thought and political liberalism in Indonesia, and its typology of ‘Islamic liberalism’ has proven broadly influential.

Greg has written or edited five books and published dozens of refereed articles and book chapters in this field, together with numerous essays. He is a frequently interviewed by the Australian and international electronic and print media on Islam, Islamic and Islamist movements and on Indonesia and politics.

His biography of Abdurrahman Wahid (2002, Abdurrahman Wahid, Muslim Democrat, Indonesian President: a view from the inside, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press) was published in 2002 (and translated and published in Indonesian in 2003). His book: Indonesia’s Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and the Soul of Islam, was published in 2004 by UNSW Press (and by Singapore University Press in 2005).

He is currently working on two other book projects: Progressive Islamic thought and social movements in Indonesia and Turkey (which returns to some of the themes and material he first addressed in his published PhD thesis Gagasan Islam Liberal); and: Islam’s Other Nation: a fresh look at Indonesia.

Management and Development Responsibilities

• Acting Director of the Centre for Islam and the Modern World
• Deputy UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations – Asia Pacific
• Member of Academic Board
• Member of Faculty Board
• Developed new content on Religion and the Modern State, The Evolution of Modern Terrorism and Security Issues in Southeast Asia for the Executive Course/Advanced Security Cooperation Course at APCSS
• Developed new content on Jemaah Islamiyah and the historical development of terrorism for the Comprehensive Security Responses to Terrorism (CSRT) at APCSS
• Developed and led an APCSS team providing  a one week workshop for senior Indonesian Officials on developing a national security council /senior interagency process and program to deal with natural disasters and other sudden national emergencies.
• Co-developed and co-organized a major international conference: Security Cooperation and Governance in Southeast Asia: Responding to Terrorism, Insurgency and Separatist Violence in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, organized by APCSS and IDSS, 26 – 28 September 2006 Singapore.
• Developed and wrote two new units (courses) in 2004 for offer at Melbourne and Geelong campuses and an online/CD-Rom pack: AIP280/380 Global Islamic Politics; and AIE101 Culture and Society in Contemporary Asia.  Together with AIP298/389 Political Leadership (developed in 2003 and offered in Semester 1 2004) these units are the first in the faculty to be wholly reliant on digital material (60-110 digitized readings plus audio interviews and video material and hundreds of digital still images).
• Convener of the Politics group in 2003 during which time I helped oversee the redevelopment of the Politics Major, including developing new units in Political Leadership and Global Islamic Politics and pioneering the adoption of online IT and multimedia for teaching.
• Chaired the redevelopment of Asia Studies, including the development of a new foundation unit on Culture and Society in Contemporary Asia
• actively involved, as a member of the small Executive Board, in the management of the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, one of Deakin’s most successful research centers.
• A member of Faculty Board in 2003
• A member of the university Religious Affairs Committee

Research

In 2010 Greg commenced work on four new funded research projects:

Together with Dr Thomas Reuter (University of Melbourne) he is undertaking an ARC Discovery Grant funded project entitled: Under New Leadership: A study of the composition, behaviour and interactions of cultural, religious and political elites in democratic Indonesia

Together with Dr Julian Millie (Monash) and Prof Miko Moriyama (Nanzan University) he is undertaking an ARC Discovery Grant funded project entitled: Glocalisation and sub-national Islams in Indonesia: neo-traditionalism, local Islam and the commemoration of regional Islamic legacies

Together with Dr Peter Lentini and Dr Simon Moss (Monash) and Dr G GaetanoJ Ilardi  (Victoria   Police) he is undertaking an ARC Linkage Grant funded project entitled: Radicalisation, Counter- Radicalisation, and De-Radicalisation:  Developing a New Understanding of Terrorism in the   Australian Context

Together Dr Ian Chalmers (Curtin University), Dr Zifirdaus Adnan (UNE) and A/Prof John Horgan (University of Pennsylvania) he is undertaking a US Ambassadors Fund for Counterterrorism funded project entitled: The Making and Unmaking of Indonesian Mujahidin

His research has been previously funded by three Australian Research Council Large Grants. Details of his current ARC Linkage and Discovery grants - on traditional Islam in Indonesia; on Indonesian political culture; and on radicalisation, counter-radicalisation and deradicalisation - are listed below. This research has involved more than 50 visits to Indonesia were he has worked extensively with researchers from Australia the USA, France and Indonesia.  He has developed internationally recognised expertise in Islam, Islamic social movements, civil society, politics and Islamist radicalism in Southeast Asia.

Details of research projects and grants

Consultancies and Public service

Founding Member of the Editorial Board of  Dialogue Australasia, the first magazine in the Asian-Pacific Hemisphere dedicated to building public understanding about religious communities and traditions and their common humanitarian concerns.

Consultant to Deakin International on strengthening ties with Indonesia, involves leading a delegation of Deakin University academics to Jakarta and Yogyakarta in mid-October 2004.

Consultant to APCO/Strategic Issues Management Group project on fostering understanding of Indonesia globally, and especially in Australia, involves hosting a visiting Indonesian delegation to Australia in late August 2004 and arranging and speaking at a seminar in Melbourne with delegation.

Writer/editor-consultant: Moderate Islam in Indonesia, Islamic Perspectives on State, Society and Governance in Southeast Asia: A Sourcebook, project funded by DFAT/AusAid and directed by Dr Greg Fealy and Prof Virginia Hooker.

Founding Board member of The Wahid Institute (an NGO set up along the lines of Carter Center of former president Jimmy Carter) to promote religious tolerance, progressive Islamic thought, human rights and the growth of understanding between Islam and the West.

Adviser during the foundation and development of GusDur.Net (www.gusdur.net).

Adviser to Oslen-Levy Productions in December 1999-Dec 2000 on the making of the documentary about  President Abdurrahman Wahid entitled ‘High Noon in Jakarta’, made with the assistance of the Australian Film Finance Corporation and shown on ABC TV on July 4, 2001.

Adviser to the International Office (New York) of the World Conference of Religion and Peace (WCRP) on NGOs, civil society and inter-religious dialogue in Indonesia in the context of a WCRP initiative to assist Indonesian civil society groups working on inter-religious cooperation (1998-9; WCRP has requested further consultation in 2000).

Commissioned to write two long reports (approximately 30,000 words each) on Islam and politics in Indonesia and Malaysia by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council and the American Jewish Committee (1998-9).

Commissioned to write a chapter on the foreign policy of Nahdlatul Ulama [‘Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama: progressive traditionalists at peace with the world’] for a book to be edited by James Piscattori entitled: The Foreign Policies of Islamist Movements, by the New York Council for Foreign Relations (1998).

Commissioned together with Djohan Effendi to write a report on 'Freedom of Religion and Belief in Indonesia' for The World Report on Freedom of Thought, Conscience & Religion or Belief, The University of Essex, in 1995 (published in 1997).

Consultant to WCRP Australia in organizing and leading a delegation of leading religious and NGO figures to Indonesia for the purpose of nurturing understanding in Australian society of Islam in Indonesia (and elsewhere). 

Postgraduate supervision

PhD Candidates currently being supervised

MA Candidates currently being supervised

Recent Completions

Honours and MA minor dissertation candidates

2010

Ahmad Vahedian Ghaffari (MA minor dissertation)
The Green Movement of Iran

William Gourlay (MA minor dissertation)
Iran’s Green movement in the eyes of the Iran watchers

Mustafa Kadioglu (MA minor dissertation)
Investigating the paradoxical appeal of Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur Qur’anic commentary

Ha Nam Binh
The role of Islam as an enabling factor in Indonesia’s transition
to democracy

2009

Sureyya Cicek (MA minor dissertation)
The Philanthropic Understanding of the Gülen Movement In comparison with that of the Jesuits:
A comparison of the educational philosophy of the movement associated with Fethullah Gülen and that of the Jesuit- Education system

Arthur George David Derham Moore
The ‘normalization’ of Japanese defence policy

Stephanie Morley
Radical Islamist activism and social movements in Indonesia

Alexandra Phelan
Islamist militantism radicalisation and deradicalisation in Southeast Asia

Ashley Sattler
Christian Zionism, eschatology and the religious right in America