Dr Peta Stephenson
Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam 
Room 205 Tel: +61 3 8344 5989 |
Background
Originally from Brisbane, Peta Stephenson came to the University of Melbourne in 2000 as a PhD candidate in Australian Studies. She was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 2003. Prior to her arrival in Melbourne she completed a Bachelor of International Business Relations and Honours in Women’s Studies at Griffith University, and a Master of Arts in English at the University of Queensland. She has co-convened a number of Australian Studies courses and given lectures to both local and international students in the areas of Indigenous Australian history and politics; immigration and multiculturalism; and gender and sexuality.
Research Interests
Peta specialises in the study of cross-cultural alliances between non-white migrant and Australian Indigenous peoples. Her book The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia’s Indigenous-Asian Story (2007) recovers a long history of encounter between Indigenous and various Southeast Asian communities, a story being creatively retold in contemporary cultural production. Her current project traces the long history of Islam in Indigenous Australia as a way of understanding its growing popularity among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today.
Research in Progress
| Project Title: | Islam in Indigenous Australia: A History of Community Survival and Self-Renewal |
|---|---|
| Project Leader: | Dr Peta Stephenson |
| Project Summary: | An increasing number of Indigenous Australians are identifying with Islam. This project will be the first national study of this recent phenomenon and its historical antecedence. It will recover the existence of a religious and cultural phenomenon that goes back to pre-colonial times and, not only persists today, but enjoys a renewed vitality. To date the long history of absorption and transformation over time of imported Islamic religious ideas and customs in Indigenous Australia has been overlooked. The project's recovery of these experiences makes an essential contribution to an enlarged understanding of Australia's roots and traditions that will significantly add to our country's on-going project of collective self-definition. |
| Institution: | The University of Melbourne |