Biography
Judith Bovensiepen is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent. She has conducted her main fieldwork in Timor-Leste and her research interests span a variety of topics, including place, kinship, religious transformations; the anthropology of oil; colonial and post-colonial history; and the aftermath of violent conflict. Her monograph, which is entitled The Land of Gold: Cultural Revival and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Independent Timor-Leste, has just been published by Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications (SEAP). Since May 2015, Judith has been involved in an ESRC-funded project looking at the expectations and impact of petroleum-development in Timor-Leste, focusing specifically at the hopes and inequalities produced by large-scale development schemes. This is part of a broader interest in human-environment relations and in the contradictions of development and capitalist transformation.
Selected Publications:
2015 The Land of Gold: Post-Conflict Recovery and Cultural Revival in Independent Timor-Leste. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications (SEAP).
2014 Installing the Insider “Outside”: House–Reconstruction and the Transformation of Binary Ideologies in Independent Timor–Leste. American Ethnologist 41: 290-304.
2014 Paying for the Dead: On the Politics of Death in Independent Timor-Leste. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15: 103-122.
2014 Lulik: Taboo, Animism or Transgressive Sacred? An Exploration of Identity, Morality and Power in Timor-Leste. Oceania 84: 121-137.
2014 Words of the Ancestors: Disembodied Knowledge and Secrecy in East Timor. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20: 56-73.
2009. Spiritual Landscapes of Life and Death in the Central Highlands of East Timor. Anthropological Forum 19: 323-338.
