Julian Millie

Biography

After travelling through Java on an undergraduate study tour in 1987, Julian became more serious about the study of Indonesian language and culture, and went on to complete an MA on classical Islamic literature in the Malay language at Monash University, as well as a graduate diploma in Arabic. Before commencing his doctoral research at Leiden University (the Netherlands), Julian reoriented his skill set towards anthropology, wanting the challenge of doing research within contemporary populations.

Julian’s doctoral dissertation was based on his experience over fourteen months attending an Islamic intercession ritual practiced by the Sundanese people of West Java. The PhD experience made him interested in the problem that continues to motivate his research today: the conventions and routines of Islamic life were established within Indonesia’s Muslim populations well before the nation achieved its independence, but are often marginalised by the modes of subjectivity and political participation that are inherent to contemporary governance. He researched this tension in his post-doctoral work on Islamic preaching, which was published in Hearing Allah’s Call: Preaching and performance in Indonesian Islam (Cornell University 2017). This tension continues to inform his research on embodied Islamic practice and the Indonesian Ministry of Religion.

Julian’s research into the Islamic traditions of West Java has seen him undertake the study of a number of languages, notably Indonesian, Arabic and Sundanese.

Since 2020, Julian has been the Professor of Indonesian Studies at Monash University.