Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Wikke Jansen was a RePLITO visiting fellow from January to March 2022, working on issues of queer solidarity, queer(ing) religion and alternative approaches to research ethics and positionality. Her PhD research revolves around the entanglements of (im)mobility and (in)visibility with class, religion and gender among the queer community in Indonesia, where she did ethnographic fieldwork between 2017 and 2020. 

She is now working as the assistant to the chair of Visual and Media Anthropology at HCTS. For more information, please go to her homepage.

Phd Project 

Mobility Differentiated: Navigating Religion, Activism, and Everyday Life Among LGBTQ Indonesians (Working Title)

Abstract

The project focuses on the relationships between religion, sexuality and gender among the Muslim LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community in contemporary Indonesia. The unprecedented manner in which sexual and gender diversity is a topic of debate in the country has spurred not only increased opposition to sexual and gender minorities, but also an increase in secular activism as well as projects that hope to rethink traditional religious understandings of gender and sexuality. In addition, international developments ranging from the increased government scrutiny of the LGBTQ community in Malaysia to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Australia and Taiwan continue to influence the political, societal and religious discourse on gender and sexuality in Indonesia. Taking these developments as points of departure, the study seeks to explore the approaches adopted by individuals and groups to negotiate the complicated relationship between LGBTQ lives and identities, and prevailing religious and societal discourses. The range of approaches available on a personal and collective level is strongly tied to spatial, social and religious mobility. The mobility paradigm, which allows for the examination of people’s movements within and between physical, social, and imaginative spaces, serves as a theoretical lens for the multi-sited ethnography that forms the main methodological foundation for this study. 

Research Interests

Gender and sexuality, religion and activism in Indonesia, mobility, queer theory, discourse and media analysis

Academic CV

• 2016-2018: Research MA Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Leiden 
• 2010-2014: BA Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam 
• 2010-2013: BA Psychology at the University of Amsterdam

Lectures

• 2019: "Activism contested: Examining discourses of Islam, Human Rights and 'Indonesianness' among gender non-conforming groups in Indonesia," as part of the conference on "Transgender: Intersectional/International Conference" at the University of Edinburgh, May 2019. 
• 2016: "The Role of the 'Ulama' in Libya's Transitional Justice Process," as part of the conference on "Real Property Conflicts and Transitional justice" at the KITLV Institute in Leiden, October 2016. 
  
  
  
  

• 2020 – 2021
  Instructor • Humboldt University Berlin
  Course: Fashioning Queer Mobilities in Southeast Asia: Social Media Practices and Non-Normative Sexuality & Gender (Q-Team)
  
  
• 2021
  Co-instructor • Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies
  Workshop: Digital Ethnography

• Jansen, Wikke. 2021. "Extending an Indonesian Umbrella: A Case Study of Queer (Trans)National Solidarity by @kamusqueer." In: Nadja-Christina Schneider and Maitrayee Chaudhuri (eds.) Imaginations, Narratives and Mediated Performances of Solidarity and Community. RePLITO. https://replito.pubpub.org/pub/zz6d4oc2.