Biography
Dr Maree Pardy is a social and cultural anthropologist and is a 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 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.
Her professional roles have included social planning, community development and research with newly arrived refugee and immigrant women, and also in the areas of housing and homelessness. Internationally she has worked on issues of gender and development; women workers and globalisation; trade unions in developing economies; political and economic restructuring and women’s organising at local, national and international scales.
Maree’s research focuses on gender, culture and global change. She brings her academic training in anthropology, feminist theory and gender studies together with her professional experience. She researches and publishes in the areas of gender and globalisation; gender and cultural diversity; gender and sexuality in cross cultural contexts; gender, sexuality and human rights; gender and feminist theories of global urbanisation; emotion, culture and politics.
She has particular expertise in ethnographic research. Her first major study with Vietnamese women explored regimes of gender and sexuality across divergent cultural imaginaries of womanhood, place and nation. She continues her research with Vietnamese women. She has also undertaken research on urban space/place and cultural diversity in Australia, which she also continues.
Her current research on intercultural encounters in urban settings (domestic and international); ongoing debates and lived experiences of gender, sexuality and human rights; religion in public space, especially its relation to gender, sexuality rights and the public sphere.
She is especially focused on current trends towards ‘culturalising’ gender and sexuality oppression (via religion and culture) and ‘sexualising’ problems of politics (in security and conflict). She has recently published in these areas as well as on the renewed ‘global feminist clashes’ between gender, human rights and culture where she observes how culture has become newly and problematically realised as the cause rather than the context of gender and sexuality matters.
Qualifications
Bachelor of Arts, Monash University, 1988
Master of Arts, (Anthropology and Sociology) Monash University 1998
PhD, Anthropology, University of Melbourne 2006
Biography summary
Dr Maree Pardy is a social and cultural anthropologist and is a 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.
Research interests
Maree’s research focuses on gender, culture and global change. She brings her academic training in anthropology, feminist theory and gender studies together with her professional experience. She researches and publishes in the areas of gender and globalisation; gender and cultural diversity; gender and sexuality in cross cultural contexts; gender, sexuality and human rights; gender and feminist theories of global urbanisation; emotion, culture and politics.
Teaching interests
Gender and Development
Gender and Globalisation
Human Rights and other rights
Gender in Cross Cultural Perspective
Development Studies
Gender, bodies, emotion
Feminist theory
Units taught
Subjects and Units Currently Teaching
ADS 704 International and Community Development Theory and Practice A
ADS 711 Non Government Organisations and other Development Actors
AIS 302 Developed and Developing Worlds
ADS 705 International and Community Development Theory and Practice B
Knowledge areas
Current areas of interest:
Gender, Culture and Globalisation
Culture and Human Rights
International Human Rights campaigns
Ethnographic methods
Urban space, place and diversity
Religion and Public Space
Conferences
Conference Papers/Presentations
2016
Upagainst togetherness: clashing bodies and crushing feelings in urban diversity, Diverse Urban Cultures in the Anthropocene, Deakin ADI Symposium, June 8-9,
2015
Culture and Human Rights: Contest, Consonance and Accommodation – invited panel speaker, Global Frictions Seminar Series, RMIT September
2014
Feeling ‘cosmopolitan’ through Transnational ‘rights’ feminism – invited panel AAS/NZAAS, November
Feeling Ethical – Imagining Global rights through Local Women, Gender and Culture, AWGSA (Australian Women and Gender Studies Association) Conference, June
2013
“Under Western Eyes again?” Gender, Rights and Culture problems, Contemporary Cultures and Societies Seminar Series, University of Melbourne, October
Culture and Rights Imaginaries – too little and too much, Imagining Muslim Women Symposium, Melbourne Law School, September 2013
Is multiculturalism good for women? Asking the wrong questions VICMUN, University of Melbourne, July
2012
Gender, religion and the culture clash: Human rights as racism? Culture and Rights Symposium, Anthropology, Sydney University, July 2012
What is Gender? The Gender Agenda, Australia’s Role in the World, University of Melbourne, August
2010
Concrete Emotions – understanding diversity and urban renewal through emotion. (Public Seminar as Part of Visiting Professorship), Monash Sunway University, November 28,
2009
Troubling Ideas about community – who’s in and who’s out? 6th Australian Housing Conference, Melbourne, November
We will give them the place they want! Ethnography, cultural diversity and place, to VicUrban Uni (Annual Staff Inservice) – Melbourne Convention Centre, October
2007
Migration, community and kinship - drug use and Vietnamese-Australian families, Family, Alcohol and Drug Network, National Conference, Melbourne, June
Anxious Nationalism and fragile identities – reflections on cultural identity in Australia, Invited paper at “Talk Blak2: The politics of Australian identity: recent stories” - City of Melbourne, Melbourne Conversations, June
2006
Otherness, masculinity and the nation – Cronulla, frenzy and anthropology – Invited Paper, Debates in Contemporary Culture and Society, The Sydney Riots – What Significance? School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies Public Debate Series, April
2005
Vietnamese women and “f” words—freedom, fate, face and family—lifeworlds of Vietnamese-Australian women, Invited paper - “Vietnamese Presence Conference: 30 years of settlement in Australia, University of Melbourne; September 30,
Projects
I research across the broad areas of ‘gender and culture’ with a particular focus on global, cross-cultural and multicultural contexts. I have undertaken long-term fieldwork among Vietnamese-Australian women. My current research examines global intersections of gender, culture, religion and human rights
Gender Culture Religion and Multicultural Shifts
Through ethnographic analysis of a number of ‘problematic’ clashes of gender and culture across a range of scales – local, national and global I examine the frames through which these ‘problems’ are articulated (rights, equality, feminism, secularism, law, backwardness), with a view to expanding available conceptual and political frames for navigating gender, culture, religion and difference in local and global contexts.
Urban placemaking and social equity in cities of superdiversity
With Professor Ruth Fincherand Dr Kate Shaw (both University of Melbourne) investigating social equity and cultural diversity in urban renewal placemaking practices.
Imagining Muslim Women – social, civic and political impacts of women’s human rights campaigns
Examination of the content and effects of human rights campaign images of Muslim and ‘other’ women. The project is located in two fields - (i) human rights – how and why such images drive global human rights campaigns; (ii) citizenship – how these images enable and constrain the participation of Muslim and immigrant women in public life.
Southeast Asian Filial Piety: the impact of mobility on a core Asian Value
With Dr Julian Lee (RMIT), Professor Paul Battersby (RMIT), Dr Joseph Goh (Sunway, Malaysia). Increased migration within and beyond Asia and other demands of the global economy has challenged the capacity of people to maintain their traditional obligations to parents. People and governments in Asia are attempting to come to terms with the legacy of their culture within a rapidly changing global economy. This project investigates the impact of this Asian migration on the value of filial piety and its effects for families, communities and the state.
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
- 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