Asian Studies - Staff

Associate Professor

BA (Asian Studies [Hons]), PhD ANU
phone: 6488 1207
email: lparker@arts.uwa.edu.au

Research Interests

Adolescence, courtship and education, particularly of girls and women
Anthropology of Indonesia, Bali and Minangkabau
Citizenship and the nation-state
Feminism and feminist theory
Gender relations in social life

Teaching

Lyn enjoys teaching and teaches units in a wide range of subjects: Indonesian language, Asian and Indonesian Studies, Anthropology and Women’s Studies. She mainly teaches the lower levels of Indonesian language and finds it very satisfying to see students progress from rank beginner level to social competence. She loves to integrate her experience of living in villages and towns in Indonesia in language classes. She teaches two Honours-level social theory units and these advanced undergraduate units:

Indonesia Society and Culture
Gender Relations in Asia
Religion, Politics and Society in Asia
Environment in Asia: Concepts and Controversies

Supervisions

Lyn has been nominated for several Excellence in Teaching Awards for supervising Honours, Masters and PhD students, and she welcomes enquiries from interested prospective research students. She finds supervisions a very satisfying part of her work, and loves to be kept at the cutting edge of research by her research students. Some of the MA and PhD theses listed below have won prizes; many chapters have been published as articles in prestigious international journals; and some are being published as books: Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among the Bugis in Indonesia by Sharyn Graham Davies (Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007); Gender Diversity in Indonesia: Beyond Gender Binaries also by Sharyn Graham Davies (London: RoutledgeCurzon, forthcoming); Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia by Chang-Yau Hoon (Brighton and New York: Sussex Academic Press, August 2008) and Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan by Laura Dales (Routledge 2009).
Lyn is now a proud “grandmother” as several of her former students are now successful academics in their own right.

Here are the topics of some of the Masters and PhD theses she has supervised:

Legitimising the Union of Myanmar Through Primary School Textbooks (prize-winning M.Ed. thesis by Nick Cheesman)

Feminist Praxis And Agency In Contemporary Japan (Laura Dales)

Hunters, Wedding Mothers, and Androgynous Priests: Conceptualising Gender among Bugis in South Sulawesi, Indonesia (Sharyn Graham)

Organisational Guanxi and State Owned Enterprises in South-west China (Stephen Grainger)

Rural Women, Poverty and Social Welfare Programs in Indonesia (Rasita Purba)

Globalizing Local Girls: The Representation of Adolescents in Indonesian Female Teen Magazines (this thesis by Suzie Handajani was awarded a Distinction)

Reconceptualising Ethnic Chinese Identity in Post-Suharto Indonesia (Chang-Yau Hoon)

Research

Lyn is an anthropologist; she has specialised in the study of contemporary society and culture in Indonesia, with a particular interest in gender relations. She has conducted long-term fieldwork in Bali and West Sumatra, areas chosen for their contrasting cultures within the Indonesian nation-state – the mainly Hindu Balinese are patrilineal and strongly patriarchal, while the Minangkabau are strongly Muslim and have a matrilineal society. Lyn makes a point of always choosing beautiful field sites.

Lyn enjoys conceptualising new research and writing projects, and this is evidenced in her numerous editing and leadership roles. One of her recent projects was a special issue of the UWA feminist journal Outskirts, which she co-edited with one of her former students, Dr. Laura Dales. The issue is on “Feminist Engagements in Other Places”. See http://www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/archive/volume17. Another collaborative project was the book, Women and Work in Indonesia (Routledge 2008), which she co-edited with Michelle Ford.

Lyn’s big passion at the moment is a comparative project on adolescence in Indonesia. She is Team Leader of this large Australia Research Council Discovery Project on “Ambivalent Adolescents in Indonesia”. In conjunction with this project Lyn and her team are producing many publications and organising many activities, including a Symposium on Islamic Education in Indonesia. See details of the Symposium here. Two other outcomes of this project are a special issue of the Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs devoted to “Islamic Education in Indonesia” (vol. 42(1), in press), and a special issue of the electronic journal, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, on “Indonesian Youth Today: Body, Sexuality and Gender”, (18, in press).

Publications since 2002

Books and Special Issues of Journals

In Press (2008d) Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, Special Issue on “Islamic Education in Indonesia”, vol. 42(1) (Guest Editor)

In Press (2008f) Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Special Issue on “Indonesian Youth Today: Body, Sexuality and Gender”, 18 (Guest Editor)
http://intersections.anu.edu.au

2008a Women and Work in Indonesia (Michelle Ford and Lyn Parker (eds),
Routledge.

2007a Outskirts: feminisms along the edge, Special Issue on “Feminist Engagements in Other Places”, 17 (Guest Co-editor with Laura Dales)
http://www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/

2005 The Agency of Women in Asia (Lyn Parker ed.). Singapore: Marshall Cavendish.

2004 Intersections: Gender, History & Culture in the Asian Context, Special Issue on “Indonesian Women: Histories and Life Stories”, 10 (Guest Editor) http://intersections.anu.edu.au

2003 From Subjects to Citizens: Balinese Villagers in the Indonesian Nation-State. Copenhagen: NIAS Press (sole author)

2003 Jurnal Antropologi Indonesia, Special Issue on Bali, 70 (Guest Co-Editor with Arlette Ottino)

Articles in Scholarly Refereed Journals

In Press (2008h) “Religion, Class and Schooled Sexuality among Minangkabau Teenage Girls,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

2008c “To Cover the Aurat: Veiling, Sexual Morality and Agency among the Muslim Minangkabau, Indonesia,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 16.
http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue16_contents.htm

In Press (2008e) (with Elisabeth Jackson) “‘Enriched with Knowledge’: Modernisation, Islamisation and the Future of Islamic Education in Indonesia,” Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, Special Issue on “Islamic Education in Indonesia”, vol. 42 (1).

In Press (2008g) “Theorising Adolescent Sexuality in Indonesia,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Special Issue on “Indonesian Youth Today: Body, Sexuality and Gender”, 18.
http://intersections.anu.edu.au

2007c “Of Faith and Feminism: Imagining Discursive Feminist Space for Muslim Women,” Outskirts: feminisms along the edge Special Issue on “Feminist Engagements in Other Places”, 17.
http://www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/archive/volume17/parker

2003 “Developing an Indigenous Modernity: Birth in Bali”. Jurnal Antropologi Indonesia, 70,
Special Issue on Bali: 20-40.

2002a “The Power of Letters and the Female Body: Female Literacy in Bali,” Women’s Studies
International Forum, 25, 1, Jan-Feb 2002: 79-96.

2002b “The Subjectification of Citizenship: Student Interpretations of School Teachings
in Bali,” Asian Studies Review, 26, 1: 3-38.
This article won the Asian Studies Review prize for best article of 2002.

Chapters in Edited Books

2008b (with Michele Ford) “Introducing Women and Work in Indonesia’” in Women and Work in Indonesia, Routledge, pp. 1-16.

2005 “Introduction. Introducing Women’s Agency” in The Agency of Women in Asia (Lyn Parker ed.). Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, pp. 1-25.

2005 “Resisting Resistance and Finding Agency: Women and Medicalized Birth in Bali,” in The Agency of Women in Asia (Lyn Parker ed.), Chapter 3. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, pp. 62-97.

Other Scholarly Public Output