Greg Barton

Professor Greg Barton

Greg is Research Professor in Global Islamic Politics in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation where he leads research on social inclusion and pluralism, Islam and civil society, democratisation, and countering violent extremism. He is the co-director of the Australian Intervention Support Hub (AISH), a pioneering collaboration between Deakin, ANU, AGD, AFP and DFAT to work with community groups in developing responses to the challenge of violent extremism.

Greg is Deputy UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations Asia Pacific, is the co-editor of the journal Islam and Christian Muslim Relations and is a non-residential Senior Fellow with the UAE-based Hedayah Center in Abu Dhabi working on countering violent extremism. He is one of Australias leading scholars of both modern Indonesia and of terrorism and countering violent extremism. In August 2015 Greg returned to Deakin University where had previously worked from 1993 to 2005.

From 2007 he was the Herb Feith Professor for the Study of Indonesia at Monash University where he taught politics and international relations and led research on radicalisation disengagement in the Global Terrorism Research Centre (GTReC). For more than 25 years he has undertaken extensive research on Indonesia politics and society, especially of the role of Islam as both a constructive and a disruptive force. He has been active in the inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society. The central axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation state. He also has a strong general interest in international relations and comparative international politics. Since 2004 he has made a comparative study of progressive Islamic thought in Turkey and Indonesia with particular reference to Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah in Indonesia and the transnational Hizmet movement inspired by Turkeys Fethullah Gulen.

Greg also has a general interest in security studies and human security and a particular interest in countering violent extremism. He continues to research the offshoots of Jemaah Islamiyah and related radical Islamist movements in Southeast Asia and is involved in teaching counter-terrorism courses at the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies (APCSS) in Honolulu and with other institutions and agencies. Greg is a frequently interviewed by the Australian and international electronic and print media on Islam, Islamic and Islamist movements around the world and on Indonesia and the politics of the Muslim world. He is a regular expert guest on ABC TVs News Breakfast and Sky News Australia and a variety of programs on ABC Radio National, ABC Local Radio, Radio Australia, SBS Radio and SBS TV, Voice of America (Washington), China Radio International (Bejing), BBC radio and television, Hongkong Radio, Radio New Zealand, China Central Television (CCTV), Channel News Asia (Singapore), and commercial radio and TV in Australia, including 3AW, 2GB, 2UE, Channel Seven News, Channel Nines Today, and Channel Tens The Project. He also writes opinion pieces for the Melbourne Herald Sun and the Australian Financial Review.

Greg has written or edited seven books and published dozens of refereed articles and book chapters in this field, together with numerous essays, including Abdurrahman Wahid, Muslim Democrat, Indonesian President: a view from the inside, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002; and Indonesias Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and the Soul of Islam, Singapore University Press in 2005. He is currently working on several other book projects: Jemaah Islamiyah, Jemaah Anshurat Tauhid and the dynamics of Jihadi terrorism in Indonesia and Malaysia; and: Islams Other Nation: faith in a democratic Indonesia. His most recent book (with Paul Weller and Ihsan Yilmaz) is The Muslim World and Politics in Transition, Creative Contributions of the Gulen Movement (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). His PhD thesis at Monash in the early 1990s examined the emergence of progressive Islamic thought in the 1970s and 80s in the political context of the Suharto regime; and the social and political consequences of the civil society activism that it gave rise to. In particular it examined the thought and activism of Abdurrahman Wahid, Nurcholish Madjid and Djohan Effendi and anticipated their contribution to democratic transition. This laid the foundations for his later studies of the Wahid presidency and of Islam and civil society. His dissertation was published in Indonesian and its typology of Islamic liberalism, and progressive, neo-modernist Islamic thought in Indonesia, has proven broadly influential.

  • Company:Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation
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