Dr Sharon A Bong

My multi-disciplinary academic background stems from my shift from dead poets to living communities in moving away from literary studies to Women’s Studies and Religious Studies over a decade ago. This leap of faith was in part, precipitated by my involvement in women’s non-governmental organizations at international, regional and national levels that compelled me to seek a greater resonance between theoretical aspirations and practical needs in building bridges between academia and society at large.

I remain indebted to the board of the British High Commissioner’s (Chevening) award that enabled me to realise these aspirations.

The culmination of this journey as an academician and activist finds expressions in my first book (Bong 2006) where I showcase how Malaysian-based feminists (25 women and two men) negotiate the tension between the rhetoric and practice of rights as contained in human rights conventions and their lived realities within multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious contexts.

In my present research project on sexuality and religion through narratives of persons in same-sex partnerships in a Southeast Asian context, I aim to re-imagine not only the meaning of ‘marriage’ in religion but also religion in ‘marriage’.

My next research project involves a multi-disciplinary study of feminism and pedagogy where I consider the impact of Gender Studies units of Monash University on the lived experiences of students with regard to the deconstruction of gender roles, sexualities and subjectivities.

As a technophobe, I am particularly pleased with my acquired expertise in qualitative researching using Grounded Theory Methodology and ATLAS.ti, a Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software that has made analyzing qualitative data such an enriching process. I zealously share this obsession with unsuspecting students.

My career path involves lecturing for the Gender Studies Programme at University of Malaya on Women, Culture and Religion; working as a Programme Officer (publications) with ARROW, the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women, a regional-based NGO that focuses on reproductive health and sexuality rights; and being a specialist writer (features) with the New Straits Times.

In terms of community service, I was invited to act as the National Expert on CEDAW that involved researching and writing the Third Report of the government of Malaysia on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). At a regional level, I am privileged to serve as the Coordinator of the Ecclesia of Women in Asia, a forum for Catholic Asian women theologians. And I am the First Vice–President of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Malaysia. In recognition of these services, I received the Pro Vice-Chancellor’s Community Service Award 2007 of Monash University.

A future aspiration is to come out of the closet as a playwright.

Academic publications

Social Commentaries