CAPSTRANS CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS 2006

• WINTER WORKSHOP ON GENDER AND BORDER SECURITY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC
  30 June - 1 July 2006

The Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), with the support of the Asia-Pacific Futures Research Network (APFRN), held its second Winter Workshop for Doctoral Students and Early Career Researchers on 30 June and 1 July, 2006.

Aims of Workshop
Who were the convenors?
Who were the participants?
Who were the invited speakers?

Aims of Workshop

The aim of the workshop was:

• To assist doctoral students and early career researchers to enhance their academic knowledge and expertise,
• Develop scholarly networks, and
• Work towards a peer-reviewed publication.

This 2 day workshop was co-convened by Lenore Lyons (CAPSTRANS) and Vera Mackie (University of Melbourne). It brought together scholars from different disciplines working on a range of topics related to the intersection of gender and border security in the Asia-Pacific.

Through the presentation of short papers on their research, workshop participants had the opportunity to discuss their research with peers and with a number of senior research mentors. It is hoped that these presentations and discussions will assist participants to publish their research.

WHO were the convenors?

Professor Vera Mackie is ARC Australian Professorial Fellow in History at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests concern gender relations in modern Japan and transnational politics in the Asian region. She gained experience in running mentoring and professional development workshops in previous roles as Dean of the Centre for Research and Graduate Studies in Humanities at Curtin University of Technology and as Co-Ordinator of the Women in Leadership Program at Victoria University.

Associate Professor Lenore Lyons is Director of CAPSTRANS. She has written extensively about the women's movement in Singapore and transnational feminist activism. She is currently working on two ARC Discovery projects – one on constructions of national identity in Riau, Indonesia (with Michele Ford at the University of Sydney), and the other on migrant worker rights activism in Singapore and Malaysia.

WHO were the participants?

The following participants were selected through a competitive application process:

Emma Dalton
PhD candidate, CAPSTRANS, University of Wollongong
The gendered dimensions of being the Japanese foreign minister: did Tanaka Makiko "make a difference?"

Kumiko Kawashima
PhD candidate, Gender Relations Centre, RSPAS, ANU
Escape to the 'free and equal' West? Japanese Migration to Australia

Adelyn Lim
PhD candidate, ANU
She's Just Like My Mother: Organising for Sex Worker Rights in Hong Kong

Anne Loveband
PhD candidate, CAPSTRANS, University of Wollongong
A War of Words: Imagining the Nation and Foreign Domestic Workers in Indonesia and Taiwan

Sara Niner
Research Associate, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne
Feto no Labarik Hakarak Dame Iha Nasaun Timor-Leste, Gender and Security in Timor-Leste

Tahmina Rashid
Honorary Fellow, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam, University of Melbourne
Militarised Masculinities, Female Bodies and Border Security in Post 9/11 Pakistan

Mohita Roman
PhD candidate, Monash University
The Comfort Women Issue: Collaboration and Nationalism through a Contemporary Lens

Caroline Spencer
PhD candidate, Asia Institute, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne
The political economy of Japan’s prostitution industry in the economic bubble of the 1960-80s

Download Book of Abstracts [pdf 90kb]

who were the invited speakers ?

Dr. Dina M. Siddiqi is a cultural anthropologist with a strong interest in gender, human rights and transnational feminist politics. She is a South Asia specialist, with particular expertise on Muslim women in Bangladesh. Her research and publications are concerned with gender and labour rights, Islamization and cultural politics, and violence against women. Dr. Siddiqi has worked for leading human rights organizations in Bangladesh and has been a consultant for UNDP, UNICEF and NORAD. She teaches anthropology and gender studies on a part-time basis in the United States. Professionally Dr. Siddiqi is committed to bridging the gap between scholarship and activism.

Dr Michele Ford is a Lecturer in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney. Her main research interests are labour migration, traditional and non-traditional forms of labour movement organisation in Southeast Asia, and regional autonomy and identity in the Indonesian provinces of Riau and Kepulauan Riau. At present, she is working on an ARC Discovery project with Associate Professor Lenore Lyons which examines transnational encounters between Singaporeans and people living in Insular Riau.

Dr Georgine Clarsen is a Lecturer in the School of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong. Georgine's research interests include history of technology, tourism and travel, twentieth-century modernity, women and war, feminist historiography, history of the body, and a history of physical performance in Australia. She is currently completing a book manuscript for Johns Hopkins University Press, entitled: Auto-Erotics: Early Women Motorists' Love of Cars, and is researching the Australian Redex Trials of the early 1950s.

Dr Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Wollongong. Her research focuses broadly on ethnographic approaches to the study of globalisation, neo-liberal development and gender relations, with a particular focus on South Asia. One of her current projects examines women's experiences of cross-border force migration from Bangladesh and internal displacement in Eastern India. It aims to evaluate the contemporary applicability of the concept of “refugee” in postcolonial contexts and explores its gendered significance.