Biography
Dr Maree Pardy is an anthropologist and Snr. Lecturer in Community and International Development and International Studies, in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
She joined Deakin University in 2016 after 10 years in Gender Studies and Gender and Development at the University of Melbourne.
Maree’s work on gender, race and culture is ethnographically and critically focussed across three broad areas –power, representation and place; human rights, law and public policy; inequality across development, humanitarianism and multiculturalism.
Maree has a professional background in the community services sector in Australia and in the International Development sector in Australia and throughout Asia especially in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.
She researches and publishes in the areas of gender and globalisation; gender and race; gender in cross cultural contexts; gender, sexuality and human rights; gender and feminist theories of global urbanisation; emotion, culture and politics.
She is especially focused on current trends towards ‘culturalising’ gender and sexuality oppression (via religion and culture); sexualising and racialising problems of politics (in security, conflict, development and humanitarianism). She has recently published in these areas as well as on the renewed ‘global feminist clashes’ between gender, human rights, culture and the law.
Qualifications
Bachelor of Arts, Monash University, 1988
Master of Arts, (Anthropology and Sociology) Monash University 1998
PhD, Anthropology (with Gender Studies), University of Melbourne 2006
Biography summary
Dr Maree Pardy is an anthropologist and Snr. Lecturer in Community and International Development and International Studies, in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Maree’s work on gender, race and culture is ethnographically and critically focussed across three broad areas – power, representation and place; human rights, law and public policy; inequality across development, humanitarianism and multiculturalism.
Research interests
Maree’s research focuses on gender, race, culture, and global change. Trained in anthropology, feminist theory, and gender studies, and with a professional background in international and community development, she researches ethnographically among immigrant communities and critically engages with policies, discourses and laws related to gender, sexuality and culture, international humanitarianism, and development. She publishes on gender and cultural diversity; gender and sexuality in cross cultural contexts; gender, race and human rights; gender and feminist theories of global urbanisation; emotion and cultural politics.
Teaching interests
- Gender Race and Development
- Gender, Sexuality and Globalisation
- Legal Anthropology - Rights and bodies
- Gender in Cross Cultural Perspective
- Gender, bodies, emotion
- Feminist theories
- Colonial, postcolonial and race theories
Units taught
Subjects and Units Currently Teaching
AIS204 Gender, Globalisation and Development
ADH714 Gender and Development
ADS704 International and Community Development Theory and Practice A
Knowledge areas
Current areas of interest:
Gender, Race, Human Rights and the Law
Race and Inequality in Development and Humanitarianism.
Ethnographic methods
Urban space, race, place and diversity
Emotion and Cultural Politics
Conferences
Conference Papers/Presentations
The enduring coloniality of Development Feminism – gender and violence interventions - Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Conference – November 2022
This paper argues that development feminism's reliance on an ahistorical and transhistorical concept of gender perpetuates the racialization of non-Western 'gendered' bodies. It empirically analyses the predominance of development interventions addressing gender-based violence and raises questions about the effects of the sector's approach to 'gender' and 'violence.'
Response to a Scandal - race and the development sector in Haiti (with A/Prof Kalissa Alexeyeff) - Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Conference – November 2022
A 2018 scandal involving Oxfam in Haiti sparked condemnation of the development and humanitarian sectors’ alleged complicity in the sexual exploitation of Haitian sex workers. Our examination of Oxfam’s media documents, shows that the sector’s representations of Haitian sex workers in this case, and its approach to sex work in general are regulated by a racialised protectionism.
Power and Resistance in Localisation - Centre for Humanitarian Leadership Conference - April 2021, Deakin University
Humanitarians from the Global South are increasingly resisting the moral legitimacy of the international humanitarian system, revealing again the relationship between resistance and power. This paper draws on empirical research with humanitarian actors and joins Foucault (1978) and Abu-Lughod (1990) in tracking the claim that "where there is resistance there is power." Claims from the Global South for an increases share of resources and power brings further light to the forms of power in the international humanitarian system.
Projects
CURRENT RESEARCH AREAS
Gender, race, culture, and law (focus on female genital cutting)
Regularly described as the quintessential clash between culture and women’s rights, female genital cutting practices have been criminalised in most countries and remain a high-profile campaign issue for multilateral institutions and global NGOs. This project takes the law as its object of analysis, analysing its histories and effects. In recent years these laws have come under increasing scrutiny for their paradox of producing harm while aiming to prevent it. The history and present-day of laws in Australia are examined through the experiences of those most affected by them.
Political atmospheres and emotion in global women’s rights campaigns (focus on history of the emergence of FGM laws in Australia).
Atmosphere theories have emerged as important to the social sciences, allowing us to consider how atmospheres alter the things that can be spoken or the kinds of actions that become unthinkable. Some have suggested that atmospheres become a kind of affective engineering. This project engages these theories to consider how specific gendered practices become caught up by a social, cultural, and political force that takes hold and drives allowable narratives, actions, and prohibits others. This project engages these theories to consider how specific gendered practices become caught up by a social, cultural, and political force that takes hold and drives allowable narratives and actions while prohibiting others.
Inequalities of power in development and humanitarianism (focus on locally led interventions)
Participation and localisation are the latest buzzwords in attempts to address the structural inequalities in the international aid system. This project engages ethnographically with the experience of people at the frontline of humanitarian responses in war and disasters (current focus Ukraine) and seeks to understand the enabling and hindering factors that support localised or locally led humanitarian responses.
Race, gender, and sexuality in development (focus gender and violence interventions)
Gender and development interventions heavily focus on gender-based violence, and this project questions whether development’s concept of gender and violence is both ahistorical and transhistorical, and how it works to either prevent or perpetuate racialized representations of non-Western gendered bodies. It empirically analyses the predominance of development interventions addressing gender-based violence to reveal more about the effects and effectiveness of the sector's approach to 'gender' and 'violence.'
Publications
Response to a scandal: sex work, race, and the development sector in Haiti
M Pardy, K Alexeyeff
(2022), pp. 1-25, International Feminist Journal of Politics, London, Eng., C1
Imagining muslim women in secular humanitarian time
S Ghumkhor, M Pardy
(2021), Vol. 46, pp. 387-416, Signs, Chicago, Ill., C1
M Pardy, J Rogers, N Seuffert
(2020), Vol. 29, pp. 273-293, Social and legal studies, London, Eng., C1
Psychoanalytic theories of Gender
M Pardy
(2018), pp. 1-5, International encyclopedia of anthropology, London, Eng., B1
Transnational feminisms and cosmopolitan feelings
M Pardy
(2018), Vol. 67, pp. 94-101, Women's studies international forum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, C1
Words and questions: the category/governance complex in social science knowledge-making
M Pardy
(2018), Vol. 48, pp. 35-42, Etnološka tribina: godišnjak Hrvatskog etnološkog društva, Zagreb, Croatia, C1
'Sexurity' and its effects in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
C Mertens, M Pardy
(2017), Vol. 38, pp. 956-979, Third World quarterly, Abingdon, Eng., C1
Place-making or place-masking? The everyday political economy of "making place"
R Fincher, M Pardy, K Shaw
(2016), Vol. 17, pp. 516-536, Planning theory and practice, Abingdon, Eng., C1
Hien's shed: (re)framing images of female immigrant home-based clothing workers
M Pardy
(2014), Vol. 21, pp. 68-86, Gender, place and culture: a journal of feminist geography, Abingdon, Eng., C1-1
Under western eyes again: rights vernacular and the gender culture 'clash'
M Pardy
(2013), Vol. 19, pp. 31-53, Australian journal of human rights, Chatswood, N.S.W., C1-1
Hate and otherness-exploring emotion through a race riot
M Pardy
(2011), Vol. 4, pp. 51-60, Emotion, space and society, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, C1-1
Using buzzwords of belonging: everyday multiculturalism and social capital in Australia
M Pardy, J Lee
(2011), Vol. 35, pp. 297-316, Journal of Australian studies, Abingdon, Eng., C1-1
Funded Projects at Deakin
Australian Competitive Grants
The effects of female genital mutilation laws in Australia.
Dr Juliet Rogers, Prof Nan Seuffert, Dr Maree Pardy
ARC - Discovery Projects
- 2022: $25,246
- 2021: $47,613
- 2020: $18,423
Industry and Other Funding
A reimagined Crisis Leadership Programme for the Ukraine response.
A/Prof Max Kelly, Dr Maree Pardy, Dr Daniel Mcavoy, Dr Andrea North-Samardzic
The Humanitarian Leadership Academy
- 2023: $6,926
- 2022: $366,905
Supervisions
Bidhya Chapagain
Thesis entitled: Reforming the Judicial System in Nepal: Trusting Justice
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Leanne Kelly
Thesis entitled: What's the point? Program evaluation in small community development NGOs
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences