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Professor Greg Barton

Biodata Overview

Dr Greg Barton joined Monash University as the Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia in January 2007, based in the school of Political and Social Inquiry (PSI) in the Faculty of Arts.  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.

At Monash Greg is Acting Director of the Centre for Islam and the Modern World and Deputy UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations – Asia Pacific.  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.

His work on Indonesia politics and society, especially of the role of Islam as both a constructive and a disruptive force is well known. Over the last six years he has commenced a comparative study of progressive Islamic thought in Turkey and Indonesia and, more recently, is extending this comparative study to India.  He has a strong general interest in comparative international politics.

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.  (In August 2009, for example, he taught in one week intensive counter-terrorism course with APCSS in Phnom Penh; in July he designed and was the sole teacher for an intensive winter school course with the Centre for International Security Studies (CISS) at the University of Sydney; in May he taught in a Comprehensive Security Responses to Counter Terrorism course with APCSS in Honolulu and in March he taught in a Terrorism: International Political and Social Perspectives (TIPSP) course in Canberra; on September 21 he spoke in two panels ‘examining the future of the Asia-Pacific’ briefing the office of the commander and senior leadership of the US Pacific Command (PACOM) in Honolulu and on September 23 he participated at a ‘Defense-Policy Trends in Transnational Terrorism Workshop’, in Virginia, for the Office of Secretary of Defense).

Researching his biography of Abdurrahman Wahid through the years of reformasi, post-Suharto election campaigning, and the rise and fall of the Wahid presidency, and subsequent research through the Yudhoyono presidency, afforded him a unique perspective from which to observe and analyse Indonesia’s political culture.  He continues to research and write about Indonesia’s political culture. 

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 complete dissertation was published in Indonesian with the assistance of the Ford Foundation (Gagasan Islam Liberal…: [Liberal Islamic Thought: A study of the writing of Nurcholish Madjid, Djohan Effendi, Ahmad Wahid and Abdurrahman Wahid], 1999, 609 pp - and a new edition is currently being prepared for publication). 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’s 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.

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. 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. 

Postgraduate Supervision

PhD Candidates currently being supervised

PhD
Student Topic Supervisor/s
Virginie Andre Islam, ethnicity and the drivers of social conflict in southern Thailand Dr Peter Lentini / Prof. Greg Barton

Jan Fermelis

A qualitative investigation of evolving intercultural hybridism: Business communication strategies and adaptations by Australian expatriates in Shanghai

Prof Marika Vicziany / Prof Greg Barton

Jonathan Samuel Lyons

War without End? A Social Historiography of 1000 Years of Anti-Islam Discourse

Prof.Emeritus Gary Bouma / Prof Greg Barton

Ela Ogru

A comparative study of Horn of Africa and Turkish Muslim migrant experiences in Australia

Prof Greg Barton / Dr Peter Lentini

Joshua Roose

Australian born Muslims challenging a dominant negative discourse

Prof Greg Barton / Dr Dharma Arunachalam / Dr Peter Lentini

Badrus Sholeh

Jemaah Islamiyah’s community of support in Indonesia

Prof. Greg Barton

Sven Alexander Schottmann

The 'Islamic State' and the 'New Malays': Islam in the politics of Mahathir Mohamad

Dr Julian Millie / Prof Marika Vicziany / Prof Greg Barton

David Tittensor

New Islamic philanthropy and the vision of social development through self-development: a study of the Gülen Movement's program of schools and colleges in Turkey and Central Asia.

Prof Greg Barton / Dr Peter Lentini

Rachel Woodlock

Australian-born Muslims sense of self

Prof.Emeritus Gary Bouma / Prof Greg Barton

Mokhammad Yahya

Islamic Revivalism/Fundamentalism and Political Islam in Indonesia

Prof Greg Barton / Dr Julian Millie

MA Candidates currently being supervised

MA
Student Topic Supervisor/s

Linda Hindasyah

"Syariat Islam, Conflict, and Religious Violence in Indonesia."

Prof Greg Barton / Dr Julian Millie

Derya Akguner

The source of conflict, conflict resolution techniques and peace with specific focus on Turkey and Rum-orthodox and Jewish Religion Minority Group

Prof Greg Barton / Dr Peter Lentini

Honours Candidates (2009)

Honours
Student Topic

Sureyya Cicek
(MA minor dissertation, honours equivalent)

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

Refereed Publications

Sole-authored Academic Books

Edited Academic Books

Chapters in edited books

Academic articles in refereed journals

Essays and other articles

Research Grants

Current Australian Research Council Funded Research

Previous Research Grants

Recent seminars and public speaking

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