Upcoming Event

The Korea Research & Engagement Centre and History  Program in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University, invite you to a Joint Seminar with Professor Kate McGregor.

• Date: Thursday 12 October 2023 

• Time: 4:00-5:30 pm (Perth, AWST) / 6:00-7:30 pm (Melbourne, AEST) 

• Location: Online via Webex 

RSVP by Thursday 12 October 2023 at:

https://events.humanitix.com/mcasi-history-krc-kate-mcgregor

About the Event

In this seminar, Professor Kate McGregor discusses her new book Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia (UW Press, 2023), an in-depth empirical history of the system of enforced military prostitution during the Japanese occupation of the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia) and the complicated development of transnational activism to achieve recognition and compensation for survivors. This book is the first major study of Indonesian transnational human rights activism and the Indonesian so-called ‘comfort women’. By adopting a comparative frame to analyse Japanese, Korean and Indonesian activism on this issue, with some attention also to Filipino and Dutch activism, it examines how, when and why this issue finally opened up in each country in the 1990s. Through this comparative analysis, the book assesses why Indonesian activism and critical framings of this issue developed more slowly in Indonesia.

About the Speaker

Professor Kate McGregor, The University of Melbourne, is a historian of Indonesia. Her research interests include Indonesian historiography, memories of violence, the Indonesian military, Islam and identity in Indonesia and historical international links between Indonesia and the world. Kate's latest monograph Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory and Sexual Violence in Indonesia is an outcome of a four-year Australian Research Council Future Fellowship on the project Confronting Historical Injustice in Indonesia: Memory and Transnational Human Rights Activism. She is currently involved in an ARC project with Associate Professor Ana Dragojlovic, Submerged Histories: Collaborative Memory Activism between Indonesia and the Netherlands.

This event has been supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2022-OLU-2250005).