Newcastle University

Background

Like many Australians, I have a parent born overseas. My mother (and her family) are all Australian born (of Scottish and German descent) but my father is from Birmingham (of English and Irish descent). I have lived in many parts of Australia including Adelaide (my home town), Alice Springs, Canberra, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. I have a fondness for Melbourne and Sydney. As a teenager, I also spent an eye opening year in Lae, Papua New Guinea.

Roles and Responsibilities

PGT Director (Politics)(2005-2008)(my main achievement during this time was assisting with the design of and steering through the approval process three new MA degrees. MA International Politics [Critical Geopolitics]; [Global Justice and Ethics]; and [Globalisation, Poverty and Development]
Degree Programme Director, MA International Studies & MA European Union Studies (2005-2008)
School Research Committee member (2005-)
PGR Director (2003-04)
Politics Steering Group (2004-05)

Qualifications

My first degree was a Bachelor of Arts, Flinders University of South Australia with majors in Political Science and Indonesian language and a minor in Asian Studies.
I completed a first class Honours degree in Asian Studies at the same institution. My dissertation was Understanding Electoral Politics in New Order Indonesia. My primary interest in that dissertation was to explore how the New Order's non-competitive elections managed political aspiration and disaffection.
I gained my PhD in the Political Science and International Relations programme at Australian National University in 1997. My supervisors were Prof Barry Hindess and Prof David Campbell. My dissertation was called Knowing Indonesia: Orientalism and the Discourse of Indonesian Politics. Using the work of Michel Foucault (especially the literature on power/knowledge and governmentality) and Edward Said (Orientalism was the key publication) I explored the way that Indonesian political life had been constructed in mainly US and Australian social and political science.

Previous Positions

Visiting Professor, Dept of Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada (2001-02).

Lecturer in Asian Studies, Coordinator of Asian Studies and Deputy Head of School, School of Asian Languages and Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia (1998-2001).

Lecturer in International Politics (.5) Wollongong University, Wollongong, Australia (1997).

Memberships

British International Studies Association
International Studies Association
Asian Studies Association of Australia Coucil Member (2001)
Asian Studies Association of Australia (1998-2002)

Honours and Awards

Visting Fellowship, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University ($8000) (1998-99)
Australian Postgraduate Research Award (1993-96)
Australia Asia Research Award ($17500) (1994)
HECS Exemption Scholarship (1992)
Chancellor's Letter of Commendation (1989-91)

Languages

English is my first language and I speak some Indonesian. My first degree had a major in Indonesian but I have had little opportunity to make use of these skills since moving to the northern hemisphere in 2001.

Informal Interests

I am a keen fan of cricket and played as an all-rounder for Clara Vale Cricket Club (2002-06). I also have a debilitating passion for the Essendon Football Club (but have not played Australian football since school days). Motorcycling is a long term interest too and I have toured Australia and NZ extensively. More recently, I have had great trips through the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Scotland is also close to Newcastle and that is another favourite destination. I enjoy good food and entertaining friends with barbecue when northern weather permits!

Research Interests

Research interests include Western media representations of Asia, the media,popular culture and world politics, the politics of transitional justice in East Timor, Australia-Indonesia relations, postcolonial thought, the thought of Michel Foucault, particularly governmentality.

Other Expertise

I served as a UN accredited observer of the 1999 general election in Indonesia and of the independence referendum in East Timor, also in 1999. These were both fascinating experiences of democratic processes at work and the flaws in such processes. In the case of East Timor, the experience stimulated an ongoing research interest.

Current Work

My current research has three themes. My main interest is researching and writing a monograph on Western media representations of Asian cultures, countries and peoples. I have a strong interest in 'newsworthiness' and news cultures and other popular forms of representation including movies, video games and blogs. This research is funded by a British Academy Larger Grant. A second and related interest lies in the effect of the contemporary media on world politics with a growing interest in exploring this as a politics of affect. Popular culture and particularly film is something that I am slowly developing as a key area of my research with one publication out, another that explores American foreign policy through amnesia films nearing completion and a third that considers the (commerical and critical) failure of Iraq war films under development. My third area of research interest is the politics of East Timor. The long Indonesian occupation was a period of significant violence in the experience of most East Timorese and Australian foreign policy was complicit in this disaster. As someone with a background in the study of Indonesian language and politics and Southeast Asian politics more generally, East Timor loomed large in my concerns about Australia and the peoples of Southeast Asia.

Future Research

My main priority at the moment is the three year British Academy funded project which formally began on January 1 2008. This will involve a great deal of learning about video games and their design and the blogosphere so I will be busy! I spent several weeks interviewing foreign correspondents in Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok in 2008 and 2009. The key outputs from this research will include a monograph, a couple of research papers and finally an international conference bringing together academics, film-makers, video game designers and bloggers.

In July 2008, Matt Davies, Kyle Grayson (Politics, Newcastle University), Christina Rowley and Jutta Weldes (Politics, Bristol University) and I signed an agreement with Lexington Books (a division of Rowman Littlefield) to co-edit a series of books under the title Popular Culture and World Politics. This promises to be an exciting series.

Research Roles

I am a member of the Research Committee for the School. In addition, I have been a reviewer for a number of different international journals including International Politics, Third World Quarterly, Review of International Studies and have also completed manuscript reviews for Routledge, the University of Minnesota Press and others. I am on the editorial board for Borderlands ejournal.

Postgraduate Supervision

Over the years I have been at Newcastle I have and continue to supervise and co-supervise a number of PhD students. These include:

Rasha El-Ibiary, Televisual Represenation of the 'War on Terror': Comparative Analysis of Al Jazeera and CNN in Covering the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (graduated)

Silvana Gliga, European Integration and European Nation-Building Traditions, (graduated)

Talya Leodari, Place, Identity, Memory/History: Knowledge, Myth and Truth in Israel/Palestine

Andres Perezalonso, Truth Matters: An Assessment of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis Through the Case Study of the George W. Bush’s Administration’s War on Terrorism (complete, graduate mid-2010)

Mark Edward, The Presence and Construction of the Caribbean in Electronic Representations (submitted, viva March 2010)

Anna Brightman, Unveiling Activism: Muslim Women and Political Organisation in Indonesian Universities

Rohana Abdul Hamid, The Internet and Democracy in Malaysia

Nick Appleby, Political Communication and Political Violence

I have worked with a number of these students in assisting them to secure research funding.

Esteem Indicators

Translation into Indonesian of my monograph Rethinking Indonesia: Postcolonial Theory, Authoritarianism and Identity. The translation was completed and published in 2003 by LKiS in Yogyakarta with the title Meruntuhkan Indonesia: Politik Postkolonial dan Otoritarianisme.

May-June 1999 UN volunteer observer of the Indonesian general election (Jakarta and Jayapura) under the auspices of the UNDP and the Australian Council for Overseas Aid.

August-September 1999 UN volunteer observer of the popular independence plebiscite in East Timor (Dili) under the auspices of UNAMET and the Victorian Local Government Association.

Funding

Virtually the Same: Asia Among the Digital Fragments, funded under the British Academy Larger Grants Scheme (£65.5k)(January 1 2008-December 31 2010). I also received a small grant under the Arts and Humanities Research Fund here at Newcastle which funded a short period of field work in Dili, East Timor in January 2005

Projects

• Virtually the same-: Asia among the digital fragments
  Project Leader(s): Dr Simon Philpott

Undergraduate Teaching

POL1016: Focusing on Politics: Film, Popular Culture and the Political (module leader in 2008-09)
POL2078: Critical International Politics (a contribution on postcolonialism)

Postgraduate Teaching

POL8044: Critical Geopolitics (module leader in 2008-09)

• Davies M, Philpott S. Militarization and Popular Culture. In: Kassimeris, C., Gouliamos, K, ed. The Marketing of War in the Age of Neo-Militarism. London: Routledge, 2011, pp.42-59.
• Philpott SD. Is anyone watching? War, cinema and bearing witness. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 2010, 23(2), 325-348.
• Grayson K, Davies M, Philpott S. Pop Goes IR? Researching the Popular Culture-World Politics Continuum.. Politics 2009, 29(3), 155-163.
• Philpott S. Postcolonial Troubles: The Politics of Transitional Justice in Timor-Leste. In: Binchy W, ed. Timor-Leste: Challenges for Justice and Human Rights in the Shadow of the Past. Dublin: Clarus Press, 2009.
• Philpott S, Mutimer D. The United States of Amnesia: US Foreign Policy and the Recurrence of Innocence. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 2009, 22(2).
• Philpott S. Another Go at Life: Dili, East Timor. Theory and Event 2007, 10(2).
• Philpott S. East Timor's double life: Smells like Westphalian spirit. Third World Quarterly 2006. , 27(1), 135-159.
• Philpott S. A Controversy of Faces: Images from Bali and Abu Ghraib. Journal for Cultural Research 2005, 9(3), 227-244.
• Philpott S. Call and response - Violence and the making of modern nations. Political Theory: an international journal of political philosophy 2005. , 33(3), 432-436.
• Philpott S, Mutimer D. Inscribing the American body politic: Martin Sheen and two American decades. Geopolitics 2005, 10(2), 335-355.
• Philpott S. Farewell Edward Said. Borderlands 2003, 2(3).
• Philpott S, Ali NM , Fauzan U, Qodir Z. Meruntuhkan Indonesia: Politik Postkolonial dan Otoritarianisme. Yogyakarta: Lembaga Kajian Islam dan Sosial, 2003.
• Philpott S. The natural order of things? From ‘Lazy Natives’ to political science. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 2003, 4(2), 249-263.
• Philpott S. Protecting the borderline and minding the bottom line: Asylum seekers and politics in contemporary Australia. Refuge 2002, 20(4).
• Philpott S. Fear of the Dark: Indonesia and the Australian National Imagination. Australian Journal of International Affairs 2001, 55(3), 371-388.
• Philpott S. Groundhog Day: Defence Planners Wake up and Find Asia is (Still) a Threat. Inside Indonesia 2001, 66, 22-23.
• Philpott S. Rethinking Indonesia: Postcolonial Theory, Authoritarianism and Identity. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.