Prof S Sayyid
Director of The MnM Centre
Professor S Sayyid is the newly appointed Director of the Muslim Non-Muslim Centre. Prof S Sayyid's research interests are threefold. Broadly, his research explores ethnicity and racism. Secondly, he examines the relationship between culture and politics. Thirdly, he is interested in postcolonial political studies, and looks at the way in which the analysis of postcolonial conditions informs and affects so-called 'mainstream' political and social processes and structures. He has published extensively on contemporary Muslim politics, Islamophobia and South Asian diasporas in Britain. Prof S Sayyid teaches on racism, postcolonalism, critical theory and 'political Islam'. He is keen to supervise research students interested in ontological analysis rather than ontic studies, that is, to think how entities come into being. He is also able to supervise research in topics that relate to questions of coloniality, formations of racism and what can be called, not unproblematically, political Islam.
Key publications
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S Sayyid and Vakil AbdoolKarim (eds) (2010) Thinking through Islamophobia: global perspectives, Columbia University Press, New York.
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N Ali, VS Kalra and S Sayyid (eds) (2008) A postcolonial people: South Asians in Britain, Columbia University Press, New York.
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S Sayyid (2003) A fundamental fear: Eurocentrism and the emergence of Islamism, Zed Books.
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S Sayyid (2000) 'Bad faith: anti-essentialism and universalism' in Avtar Brah and Annie E Coombes (eds), Hybridity and its discontents, Routledge.
Dr Nahid Afrose Kabir
SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW
Dr Nahid Afrose Kabir is a scholar on the subject of modern Muslim affairs; she is the author of Young British Muslims: identity, culture, politics and the media; and Muslims in Australia: immigration, race relations and cultural history. Nahid Kabir was awarded a PhD in history by the University of Queensland, Australia in 2003, and her thesis is titled, ‘The Muslims in Australia: an historical and sociological analysis, 1860–2002’. Nahid Kabir was a visiting fellow (Aug 2009 – Jul 2011) in the Islam in the West program at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, USA.
Nahid Kabir has conducted extensive research on Muslims in Australia, the UK and the USA. Dr Kabir observes that Muslim migration has taken place in these countries for several centuries but after the September 11 Twin Towers bombings Muslims have become viewed as 'the Other'. In her book Muslims in Australia, Kabir examined the basis of such a view from an historical perspective. She discussed how the actions of militant Islamic groups have impacted upon Muslims in general in western society. In her second book, Young British Muslims, Nahid Kabir noted that in the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings some young Muslims have been facing challenges in their everyday lives. Under such circumstances, Kabir examined how these young Muslims define their identity and their sense of 'Britishness'. Kabir emphasised the value of biculturalism which she considers would help them integrate successfully in British society. In her current research work on young American Muslim identity, Kabir is investigating how young Muslim Americans are placed within 'their American Dream'.
Nahid Kabir’s research interests include postcolonial studies, cultural studies, media studies, identity, diaspora and transnationalism, women in Islam, and Islam and politics. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, enclyclopaedia and edited books. Her full publication details can be viewed on her UniSA homepage.
Monographs
- 2010 Young British Muslims: identity, culture, politics and the media, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- 2005 Muslims in Australia: immigration, race relations and cultural history, London: Routledge.
Selected refereed journal articles
- 2009 'The culture of mobile lifestyle: reflection on the past, the Afghan camel drivers, 1860–1930', Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 23(6): 791–802.
- 2008 ‘To be or not to be Australian: focus on Muslim youth’, National Identities, 10(4): 399–419.
- 2008 ‘Are young Muslims adopting Australian values?’, Australian Journal of Education, 52(3): 229–41.
- 2008 ‘Media is one-sided in Australia: the Muslim youth perspective’, Journal of Children and Media, 2(3): 267–81.
- 2008 ‘Globalised Islam: does it have any impact on Australian Muslim youth’, International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities & Nations, 8(2): 37-46.
- 2007 ‘Why I call Australia “home”?: A transmigrant’s perspective’, Online M/C Journal, 10(4), http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php
Dr Gilbert Caluya
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
The guiding impetus behind my research is to trace how the legacies of colonialism continue to shape contemporary cultural formations in a globalised world. My research attempts to expose the ways race thinking is invested in our embodied subjectivities and the affective, semiotic and material environments in which we live. Simultaneously, my research is committed to exploring ways we might negotiate the cultural politics of colonialism by conceptualising and cultivating a postcolonial ethics. Theoretically, my work is influenced by postcolonialism and critical race theory, post-structuralism, queer theory, corporeal feminism and phenomenology (particularly Lingis and Levinas).
To date I have explored these questions in two main cultural sites: Asian diasporic intimacies and everyday cultures of security. The first body of research is based on autoethnographic, media and archival texts to explore the ways that Orientalism impinges upon the formation of sexual subjectivities in the West. It takes seriously the question of what it means to ‘face racism’ in order to interrogate the affective and semiotic dynamics of anti-Asian racism in queer culture. The second thread of research continues from my PhD thesis Terror’s territories: race, politics and everyday space and traces the emergences of everyday security practices in the post–Cold War period as a genealogy of contemporary cultures of fear.
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia. I obtained my PhD from the University of Sydney in 2009 in Gender and Cultural Studies. I am a recipient of the University of Sydney Medal, the Australian Postgraduate Award, the Sydney University College of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Award and the Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives Thesis Prize.
Publications
Gilbert Caluya (in press) ‘Domestic belongings: intimate fear and the racial politics of scale’, Emotion, Space and Society, special edition, Scales of Belonging, editor Nichola Woods
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Gilbert Caluya (2010) ‘The postpanoptic society? Reassessing Foucault in surveillance studies’, Social Identities: Journal of Race, Nation and Culture, 16(5): 621–33.
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Gilbert Caluya (2007) ‘The (gay) scene of racism: face, shame and gay Asian males’, Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies e-jounal, 2(2) read more
Dr Amrita Malhi
POSTDOCTORAL
RESEARCH FELLOW
Dr Amrita Malhi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding. Her overarching research interest is in the global and local processes of enclosure and circulation, which influence the production of subaltern subjectivities under conditions of colonialism and coloniality.
Her doctoral research focused on the production of ‘Muslim’ as a globalist political subjectivity in colonial Malaya, and its intersection with other sources of identity, such as race, empire, geo-body and nation. Amrita is also interested in the forest as a marginal site to the Malayan/Malaysian geo-body, and to the urban and agrarian locations in which processes of colonial and national identity production have been concentrated. Amrita’s PhD thesis, titled Forests of Islam: territory, environment and Holy War in Terengganu, Malaya, 1928, was awarded the 2010 JG Crawford Prize for best graduate work in the humanities and social sciences at the Australian National University. She has also been awarded the 2010 Ann Bates prize for Indonesian Studies at the ANU.
Before joining UniSA, Amrita was the inaugural Minerals Council of Australia Fellow at the National Library of Australia. There she began new research on ideas of race and nature in processes of labour subjectivation in the colonial tin mines of Billiton (Belitung) Island, located off Sumatra in the Netherlands Indies.
Amrita is also interested in the tension between global and national sources for Muslim identity in contemporary Malaysia, and has written on such issues for a variety of national media sources.
Amrita is a General Councillor for the Asian Studies Association of Australia, and co-convened the 2010 biennial conference of the Malaysia & Singapore Society of Australia.
Scholarly publications
- Amrita Malhi (2011) 'Making spaces, making subjects: land, enclosure and Islam in Malaya', Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(4).
- Amrita Malhi (2003) 'The PAS-BN conflict in the 1990s: Islamism and modernity' in Virginia Hooker and Norani Othman (eds) Malaysia: Islam, society and politics, Singapore: ISEAS, pp 236–66.
- Amrita Malhi (2003) 'Kerajaan sources and the "loyal Malay": authority and subversion in Hikayat Pelanduk Jenaka and Hikayat Hang Tuah', Jurnal Filologi Melayu, 11: 21–30.
Opinion pieces
- Amrita Malhi (2010) 'Global Gaza, global Ummah', Inside Story, Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology.
- Amrita Malhi (2010) 'Identity politics', Inside Story, Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology.
- Amrita Malhi (2009) 'Sex, race and religion still political weapons in Malaysia' in Barbara Nelson and Andrew McIntyre (eds) Capturing the year 2009: writings from the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, Canberra, pp 204–6.
Dr Chloe Patton
POSTDOCTORAL Research Fellow
In a broad sense, my work addresses the relationship between liberal national political ideologies and questions of identity and subjectivity that have arisen in a rapidly globalising world. As an ethnographer, I look to the politics of everyday social interaction in order to understand larger scale processes of social reproduction and change. Taking an intersubjective conception of self-identity as a starting point, this involves examining the way national imageries and governmental processes of recognition shape and become enmeshed within the way we come to think not just about the nation and our place in it, but about ourselves. In doing so I am interested in how colonial power structures are challenged and maintained, particularly in terms of the distribution of esteem within national social space.
My doctoral research pursued these questions in relation to the way liberal multiculturalism shapes the lifeworlds of the members of a Muslim youth group in Melbourne, Australia. A related area of interest is republican secularism, particularly how recent (and not so recent) efforts to define the limits of republican tolerance have been played out on women’s bodies in France
Publications
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'"People think our lives are dark": diasporic resistance to the metaphoric darkening of female Islamic identity” in C Flood, S Hutchings, H Nickels, G Miazhevich (eds) Islam in the plural: identities, (self) perceptions and politics, Brill, Amsterdam (forthcoming)
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'Hijab, "new piety" and women’s agency: a critique of Bronwyn Winter’s atheist feminism', Explorations: Journal of the Institute for the Study of French–Australian Relations, 47: 22–30 (2010).
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'Veiled politics: negotiating Hijabi identities in an Australian Muslim youth group”, International Journal of the Humanities, 5(6): 9–14 (2006).
Alasdair Hynd is a PhD student in the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding.
Alasdair obtained his honours in International Relations from Flinders University in 2011. His thesis examined the influence of the Arab Spring on Palestinian politics in relation to Israel and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, as well as the UN statehood bid launched by the Palestinian Authority in September 2011.
His present dissertation is on theories of democracy and rebellion and their understanding of, and application to, the Arab Spring. Within the geographic context of the Middle East, Alasdair’s research interests include interstate relations, the Israel–Palestinian conflict, the status of ethnic and religious minorities within and across state borders, domestic governorship, oil politics, and western imperialism and US foreign policy.
Kam is an International PhD student at the MnM Centre and she also works as a tutor in Ducier (David Unapion College of Indigenous Education and Research).
Her undergraduate honours degree was on African and Caribbean literature, which focused on literature of the colonised. In her dissertation she decided to concentrate on Aboriginal poetry.
At present her thesis is focusing on BrAsian women and the mechanisms through which colonial discourses still shape and dominate the lives of ethnic minorities, to the point where victims of domestic violence or forced marriage are falling into the trap of racist rhetoric.
Kam’s research interests focus on discourse theory, the contingency of the political, how identity is constructed, modalities and gaze theories.
Shvetal Vyas is a PhD student at the International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding. She also works as a a research assistant for Prof S Sayyid.
Shvetal obtained her masters and MPhil in English from the University of Delhi (India). Her MPhil dissertation contextualised Kanhaiyalal Munshi's historical trilogy in the context of the Indian national congress of the 1920s and the Gandhian struggle for freedom.
She taught in the English Department of Hindu College, Delhi University for over three years. She was a research assistant for a project on 'Contemporary Indian Writing in English and the Indian Market' under the aegis of the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University, UK. She has also worked in Mumbai for a production house working on both film and television concepts.
Shvetal's PhD is on Indian historiography. Her research interests include the role of vernacular literature in the development of regional identities and Indian popular culture.
Publications
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Gilbert Caluya, Elspeth Probyn and Shvetal Vyas (2011) '"Affective eduscapes": the case of Indian students within Australian international higher education', Cambridge Journal of Education, 41(1): 85–99.
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Shvetal Vyas (forthcoming) 'Writing fiction, living history: the historical trilogy of Kanhaiyalal Munshi', Modern Asian Studies.
