University of Tasmania, Australia

Prof Emeritus Barbara Hatley

Honorary Research Professor

"BA (hons) Oriental Studies (ANU), MA Southeast Asian Studies (Yale), PhD (Sydney)"

Contact Details

Teaching Responsibilities

Barbara supervises postgraduate students working the fields of Indonesian performing arts, society and education and gender studies. Keen to promote interest in Indonesian culture in the wider community, she has gained several grants to bring several Indonesian artists and performers to Tasmania.

Barbara Hatley was appointed foundation Professor of Indonesian at UTAS in 2000 and was Head of the School of Asian Languages and Studies at UTAS from 2000 to 2006. She has an MA from Yale, a PhD from Sydney University and taught previously at Monash University.

Research Interests

Barbara's research interests include Indonesian performing arts, modern literature and gender studies. Her PhD thesis focused on Javanese popular theatre as an expression of local social and cultural identity: later ARC-funded research analysed the ways modern Indonesian language theatre invoked cultural "tradition" to convey social and political resistance. in 2008 she published a study of theatre and identity in central Java, Javanese Performances on an Indonesian Stage (NUS Press, Singapore), which draws on this earlier research before moving on to analyse the complex relations of theatre and society in the fragmented, globalised, present-day. Another key interest is gender representation in theatre and literature, and women writers and performers.

Barbara has continued her research activities after retirement, as a member of an ARC discovery grant team which is investigating the topic 'Theatre in the Asia Pacific: Regional Culture in a Modern Global Context'. In 2010 she also co-convened an international workshop on cultural performance in Indonesia in the post-New Order period, and is currently editing the workshop papers for publication in English and Indonesian language volumes.

Full Publication List