Professor Sonja Van Wichelen
PhD University of Amsterdam
Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
Deputy-Director Sydney Southeast Asia Centre
Sonja van Wichelen is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Her research takes place on the cross-disciplinary node of law, life, and science in a globalizing world. At the moment she is working on the postcolonial politics of bioscience governance in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia. A graduate of Utrecht University (BA, MA) and the University of Amsterdam (PhD), she held postdoctoral positions in the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University (2007-2009), the Pembroke Center at Brown University (2009-2010), and the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney (2010-2014) before joining the University of Sydney in 2015. She also held a visiting appointment with the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California-Berkeley (Fall 2017) and was a Member with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2020-2021). Sonja is convenor of the Biopolitics of Science Research Network, research leader of the BioHumanity Theme, and member of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, the Charles Perkins Centre, and the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies. She published four books, is co-editor of the Palgrave MacMillan Biolegalities Book Series, and on the editorial boards of Science, Technology, & Human Values, The Sociological Review, and Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience.
Sonja's general research interests include postcolonial science studies, legal anthropology, and the sociology of globalization. A common thread throughout her work is seeing how "things" are made to circulate across borders and the role of institutions and publics in brokering these flows. Previous projects focused on cross-border reproductive technologies (including adoption and surrogacy), global migration, and transnational religion, and were spread over four fieldwork sites: the United States, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Australia.
More recently, Sonja is focusing on three new areas that traverse the fields of science and technology studies and the anthropology of law. With her long-time collaborator, Marc de Leeuw, she is further developing the concept of biolegality, which examines the constitutive relation between biology and law in the formation of knowledge and sociality. Her second area of research is concerned with the changing forms of bioscience governance (including the circulation of its materials and information) in an era of "postgenomic" research. Sonja's third research foci brings questions of biolegality and bioscience governance to bear on North-South relations. Looking at Southeast Asia (and Indonesia in particular), she examines the postcolonial and regional politics of bioscientific exchange.
Past Teaching:
Socio-Legal Theory (SLSS2606)
Social Sciences and Social Change (SSPS4101)
Nature and Society (SCLG3607)
Science, Technology and Social Change (SCLG2610)
Supervision:
Sonja van Wichelen supervises PhD, MA, and Honours students. She welcomes graduate students interested in science and technology studies, biotechnology and reproduction, global sociology, and the anthropology of law.
PhD students
- Rachel Yang, Tracking Technologies and Disease Modelling in Hong Kong
- Andrew McLachlan, Resilience in Action: Mental Health in Schools
- Sanjana Bhardwaj, Social Memory and Indian Identity in Australia
- Polina Smiragina, The Invisibility of Male Victims of Human Trafficking: Causes and Consequences (completed 2021)
- Rafaella Rapone, Identity and Inter-Generational Transmission of Culture within the Italian Diaspora (completed 2021)
- Sohoon Lee, Women between the Laws: Migrant Women, Precarity and Social Reproduction in South Korea (Completed 2017)
- Elsa Koleth, Haunted Borders: Temporary Migration and the Recalibration of Racialised Belonging in Australia (Completed 2017).
Master students
- Charlotte Hock, The Human Rights of Assisted Dying
- Zsuzsanna Ihar, Crude Cosmos: World-Making in Azerbaijan’s Former Extraction Zones (completed 2021)
- Melissa Stewart, Modern Slavery in Australia: Culture, Diplomacy and Gender (Completed 2018)
- Elsher Lawson-Boyd, Eating the same thing? A comparative ontological analysis of food in Australia (Completed 2018)
Honours Students
- Morag Kelly, The Neoliberal Governance of Mental Disability in Australia
- Alexandra Smith,Fatiqued Conditions: A Study of People with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)
- Sun Liangyu, Chinese Sojourners, Food Practices, and Cultural Identity in Australia (completed 2020)
- Elizabeth Bottomley, Discourses of ‘the child’ in the formation of national policies on Indigenous Australians (Completed 2019)
- Zaina Ahmed, Oral Contraceptives and Subjectivity: A Study of User Experience and Decision-Making (Completed 2017)
- Emma Shinozaki-Langridge, Posthuman Subjectivities and Embodiment in Narcolepsy: The Limits of Consciousness, Relational Complexity and Bodily Agency (Completed 2016)
- Natalie Leung, Transnational Lives, Transnational Identities: The Migratory Experiences of Highly Educated, Skilled Hong Kong Women in Australia (Completed 2016)
2020; Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) Workshop Grant, The Social Sciences of Epidemic Disease Modelling
2019; Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) Workshop Grant, Health Justice in the Age of Precision Medicine, University of Sydney
2018-2019; Sydney Research Accelerator Fellowship (SOAR), Biolegalities in Asia, University of Sydney.
2018; FASS Strategic Research Theme, BioHumanity Project, University of Sydney Faculty grant.
2017; Pop-Up Research Lab Grant, Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC), University of Sydney.
2017; India Development Fund, University of Sydney.
2017; Faculty Research Support Scheme (FRSS), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney.
2017; Global Partnership with National Taiwan University.
2016; Symposium Grant, “Biopolitics of Epigenetics”, School of Political and Social Sciences, University of Sydney.
2016; Reading Group Scheme, Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC), University of Sydney.
2014-2018; Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council, “The Changing Rights to Family Life in Australia: Biomedicine and Legal Governance in Globalization.
2014; Research Development Grant from the Philosophy Research Initiative, “New Spirits of Humanitarianism”, University of Western Sydney (with Jessica Whyte)
2014; Research Training Scheme Grant, “New Spirits of Humanitarianism”, University of Western Sydney (with Jessica Whyte)
2012; Humanities Faculty Grant for the international workshop “Place-Making in the Asian Century”, Hong Kong Baptist University (with Yiu-Fai Chow and Jeroen De Kloet)
2011; Internal Research Seed Grant, University of Western Sydney, “Moral Economies of Transnational Adoption: Markets and Children in Comparative Perspective”
2009-2010; Nancy L. Buc Postdoctoral Fellowship, Brown University, “The Cultural Pragmatics of Global Adoption: Markets, Adoptee-Bodies, and Transnational Ethics”
2007-2009; Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University
2007; Rubicon Award, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), “The Politics of Adoption: Social Dimensions of Adoption Practices in Comparative Perspective”
| Project title | Research student |
|---|---|
| Islam and Electoral Politics in Indonesia: The New Relation between Islamic Boarding Schools (Pesantren) and Political Parties during 2020 Indonesian Local Elections. | Miftah MIFTAHUDDIN |
| An Ethnography on the Lived Experiences of Myanmar Women Migrants in Malaysia. | Marcus Phillip PAUL |
Selected publications
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
(Rutgers University Press, 2019)
(Routledge, 2010)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Selected Grants
2020
- The Social Sciences of Epidemic Disease Modelling, Van Wichelen S, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia/Workshop Grant
2018
- Understanding Identity and Citizenship in the Era of Post-Globalization and New Nationalism, Arif Y, Van Wichelen S, Office of Global Engagement/India Development Fund
