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Indonesian Council Open Conference 2025
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Kate McGregor

Associate Dean International - University of Melbourne

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Professor Kate McGregor is a historian of Indonesia based in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. She is currently Associate Dean International for the Faculty of Arts.

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. She teaches in the areas of Southeast Asian history, the history of violence and Asian thematic history.

Kate's latest monograph Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory and Sexual Violence in Indonesia (August 2023) published by the Critical Human Rights Series of the University of Wisconsin Press focuses on transnational activism for the Indonesian so called 'comfort women', and 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. This work won the 2024 NSW Premier's General History Prize. Kate is currently working on a ARC Discovery project with Associate Professor Ana Dragojlovic called Submerged Histories: Collaborative Memory Activism between Indonesia and the Netherlands and on an edited book called Rethinking Colonial History in Indonesia in collaboration wth Dr Ken Setiawan, Dr Sadiah Boonstra, Dr Abdul Wahid and Brownyn Beech Jones. In 2024 she also commenced work as a research lead with Associate Professor Ana Dragojlovic on the Faculty of Arts sponsored research collective called: The History, Memory and Decolonial Futures Collective.

Other recent publications include the co-edited volumes Gender, Violence and Power in Indonesia: Across Time and Space (co-edited with Ana Dragojlovic and Hannah Loney, Routledge, 2020) and The Indonesian Genocide of 1965: Causes, Dynamics and Legacies (co-edited with Annie Pohlman and Jess Melvin 2018, Palgrave).

She has 24 PhD completions across the fields of Asian history and gender studies and is currently supervising six PhD students.

Kate served as President of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (2021-2022) and Vice President (2019-2020). She was elected as a fellow to the Australia Academy of Social Sciences in November 2023.


Kate McGregor's links