My current research concerns local responses to global mission networks, materiality and cultural encounters, ethnographic collecting networks between Australia and Europe, gender and object biographies and collecting histories and contemporary museum displays of colonial encounters.

Competitive Grants

ARC Grants:

2010 Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence “ The History of Emotions”, value: $ 24.2 Mill (2011-2017)

2009 CI2 “Gender, identity, power and elite family networks in the Nassau family: 1570-1650” CI2, with Winthrop Prof. Susan Broomhall, value: $ 459.000 (2010-2013)
2007 CI4 in ARC Discovery Project ”Recovering the Experience of the Indigenous Evangelist in the Expansion of Christianity in the late Colonial Era” (with Prof. N. Etherington, Prof. G. Griffiths, Prof. P. Brock) (2008-2010),value: $ 163.000 (2008-2010)

International Competitive Grants:
2008 Fritz-Thyssen Fllowship, Franckesche Siftungen Halle, Germany, value: 5000 EUR ($ 8,000)
2002 Visiting Fellowship, Max-Planck Institute of History (Göttingen) and Institute of Historical Anthropology, University of Erfurt (Germany), value: 5000 EUR ($8,000)
2009 UWA Research Collaboration Grant , value: $2000

2008 Faculty of Arts Publication Grant, value: $ 2000

2007 The University of Western Australia Research Grant, “Women in the German Moravian Church and its foreign missions in the eighteenth century” , value: $13.500
2005 The University of Western Australia Research Grant, “Missionaries between cultures: Encounter history and anthropological research at Hermannsburg mission, central Australia 1870s-1940s”, value: $16.245

Other Competitive Grants:

2006 Co-coordinator, NEER Research Cluster “The supernatural and social relations in early modern history”, funded by NEER. Team application with Prof Charles Zika (University of Melbourne), Co-ordinator with Dr. Sarah Ferber (University of Queensland), value: $12.000

Women’s Studies
Research Projects

Associate Professor Jacqueline Van Gent


1. Gender, Empire and Race: cross-cultural relations in colonial Australia


This project analyses the construction of gender roles and identities as a relational process, investigating the interactions between European and Indigenous men and women with regard to race and class as they took place on Christian missions in central Australia. The project will explore the various strategies employed by Indigenous women and men in adapting, resisting and subverting European gender roles. The project will discuss textual, visual and material representations of indigenous women and the production of gendered knowledge. This research draws on archival documents and ethnographic collections of the German Lutheran mission at Ntaria in central Australia between 1877 and the 1940s.

A second current research project in this field is the gendered nature of indigenous conversions. Here I will research female and male narratives of conversion and the gendered identities of indigenous evangelists in Australia and PNG.

This research is supported by the following grants:

Grants

ARC Discovery Project ”Recovering the Experience of the Indigenous Evangelist in the Expansion of Christianity in the late Colonial Era” (with Prof. N. Etherington, Prof. G. Griffiths, Prof. P. Brock) (2008-2010),value: $ 163.000 (2008-2010)
2005 Northern Territory History Grant, project entitled “A social history of missionary wives at Hermannsburg Mission”
2004 University of Western Australia Research Grant, project entitled “Missionaries between cultures: Encounter history and anthropological research at Hermannsburg mission, central Australia, 1870s – 1940s”

Research Outcomes

Book:
Work in progress:
Indigenous evangelists in the late colonial period (with N. Etherington, G. Griffiths, P. Brock)

Chapters
Van Gent, J. (2005) “Changing Concepts of Embodiment and Illness among the Western Arrernte at Hermannsburg Mission”, in P. Brock (ed), Indigenous Peoples, Christianity and Religious Change. Leiden: Brill.

Van Gent, J. (2004) “Blickwechsel: Arrernte encounters with Lutheran missionaries in central Australia”, in: Hans Medick and Peer Schmidt (eds), Luther zwischen den Kulturen, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Van Gent, J. (2001) “Bildung und Identität: Indigene Bevölkerung und Erwachsenenbildung in Australien”, in E. Tschernokoschewa und D. Kramer (eds), Der alltägliche Umgang mit der Differenz: Bildung – Medien – Politik. Münster, New York, Munich, Berlin: Waxmann.

Van Gent, J. (2001) "Carl Strehlow, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien ", in C. F. Feest and K.-H. Kohl (eds), Hauptwerke der Ethnologie, Alfred Kröner-Verlag, Stuttgart.

Van Gent, J. (2001) "Geza Roheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream.” in C. F. Feest and K.-H. Kohl (eds), Hauptwerke der Ethnologie, Alfred Kröner-Verlag, Stuttgart.

Refereed Articles

Van Gent, J. (2003) “Changing Concepts of Embodiment and Illness among the Western Arrernte at Hermannsburg Mission”, Journal of Religious History, October 2003.

Van Gent, J. (2003) “Voraussetzungen und Folgen eines Kolonialmassakers: Margaret Wieners Studien zu Bali als Beispiel anthropologischer Geschichtsschreibung”, Historische Anthropologie, volume 11, no.1, 2003, pp. 123-128.

Van Gent, J. (2002) (with Peggy Brock), “Generational Religious Change Among the Arrernte at Hermannsburg, Central Australia”, Australian Historical Studies, no 120, October 2002, pp. 303-318.

Conference papers (last five years):

J. Van Gent, invited commentator,”Unequal Sisters”, International Federation for Research in Women’s History conference, Amsterdam, August 25-27 2010.
J. Van Gent, “Gender and mission patronage”, NRWH conference as part of AHA biannual conference, UWA, Perth, July 2010
J. Van Gent, invited keynote , “The Lives of Others- Autobiographies in transcultural context. A response to James S. Amelang”, international conference Self-Narratives in Transcultural Context, Freie Universität Berlin, 24-26 March 2010.
J. Van Gent, “Gender and conversion in colonial Australia”, invited paper, Gender and Conversion, Freie Universität Berlin, 7. July 2008
J. Van Gent “Indigenous and German missionary masculinities, Hermannsburg mission 1870s to 1930s”, Moving Masculinities: Crossing Regional and Historical Borders. ”, Centre for Gender Relations, ANU, December 2005.
J. Van Gent, “Indigenous and German missionary masculinities, Hermannsburg mission 1870s to 1930s”, Centre for Gender Relations, ANU, conference Moving Masculinities: Crossing Regional and Historical Borders. 2005

2. Women, Religion and the Body in Early Modern Europe
This project investigates the question of how gender, religion and the body were interrelated in early modern Europe, with particular reference to the discourses of witchcraft and religious revival movements.

Magic affected male and female bodies and was committed by men and women during the early modern period. Yet the witchcraft records reveal in great detail how some forms of body magic, for example the wide-spread milk magic, were only attributed to women. We therefore need to ask how women and men differed in their uses of body magic, including the use of body fluids and body parts. What meanings were ascribed to the social aspects of female and male bodies in magic? Was male magic and female magic mutually exclusive and was the use of body magic more common for one sex than the other? And finally we need to ask whether these magical exchanges between bodies were transformed under the influence of the Enlightenment and the body borders redrawn during the eighteenth-century.

Yet witchcraft was not the only religious discourse in early modern Europe that relied on the interconnection between gender, body and power. Catholic and Protestant revival movements such as the Counter-Reformation or pietism also drew on the symbolic power of the body in very explicit ways. Public exorcism, faith healing and ecstatic visions were all regarded as bodily states that carried spiritual significance. Illness as spiritual experience was the main trope of German and Scandinavian pietism, and associated movements such as Moravian Brethren. Young women played a very prominent role in these revival movements and my research is particularly interested in the ways female independent religious practice and women’s spiritual authority was achieved through a discourse of body and power.

Research Outcomes
Book
Van Gent, J. Magic, Body and the Self in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Leiden: Brill. 2009.

Book chapters
J. Van Gent, “First Fruits” Indigenous responses to Moravian missions in the early modern Atlantic world”, PMRG Symposium, Perth, May 2008.
J. Van Gent, “The ‘preaching illness’: Pietism, women and prophecy in eighteenth-century Sweden”, ANZAMEMS conference, Adelaide, February 2007.

Grants:
2000 DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Research Scholarship for the International Women’s University at Hanover, July-October 2000. Project Area Body.

Conference papers (last five years)
J. Van Gent, “ Emotional communities Pietism and magic in eighteenth century Sweden”, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Geneva, May 2009.
J. Van Gent, “The ‘preaching illness’: Pietism, women and prophecy in eighteenth-century Sweden”, ANZAMEMS conference, Adelaide, February 2007.


3. Indigenous people and Moravian missions in the early modern Atlantic world

In this project I explore the encounter between indigenous people and Moravian missions across the Atlantic rim. I base my discussions predominately on the collection of indigenous converts’ writings (letters, memoirs), mission diaries, and painting collections which include a significant number of portraits of indigenous converts which is rare for the early modern period.

My focus is on the gendered and emotional nature of mission encounters and the difference in indigenous responses to the Moravian mission system according to their specific colonial situation in Danish colonies (Caribbean, Greenland), Dutch colonies (Caribbean, Suriname, South Africa) and English colonies (North America, South Africa).

Research outcomes:

Book:
Work-in-progress:
First Fruits: Indigenous people and Moravians in the early modern Atlantic world

Book Chapters:
Van Gent, J. “Side-wounds, Sex and Savages: Moravian masculinities and early modern Protestant missions”, in S. Broomhall and J. Van Gent (eds): Governing Masculinities: Regulating Selves and Others in the Early Modern Period (currently under review with Ashgate Publishers)

Conference papers:
Van Gent,J. invited keynote , “The Lives of Others- Autobiographies in transcultural context. A response to James S. Amelang”, international conference Self-Narratives in Transcultural Context, Freie Universität Berlin, 24-26 March 2010.
Van Gent, J. “Indigenous women and letter writing in the eighteenth century”, Scribbelings from below, Bristol, June 2010.
Van Gent,J., “First fruit- indigenous conversions in Atlantic early modern world”, Charles Zika Conference, Melbourne, September 2009.
Van Gent,J. “First Fruits” Indigenous responses to Moravian missions in the early modern Atlantic world”, PMRG Symposium, Perth, May 2008.


4. Gendered power in the Nassau family

This team project traces the dynamics of gendered power in the leading Dutch Protestant family Nassau-Orange, 1560- 1812. It investigates the representations of identity and the forms of authority that were open to the men and women of this important aristocratic family. We will trace the role of women in the establishment of an extensive family and political network across Europe and .the ways in which these women promoted the interest of their dynasty in cultural and political forms. The project utilises archival, visual and material sources to explore the gendered pathways to obtaining and maintaining dynastic power. Special attention is given to the hierarchy of masculinities (governing, subordinated etc) and the various forms of authority women could exercise (as regents, widows, wives, mothers).

Grants:
ARC Discovery grant, “Gender, identity, power and elite family networks in the Nassau family: 1570-1650” CI2, with Winthrop Prof. Susan Broomhall, Prof. Michaela Hohksmp (Free University Berlin), Dr. Susie Protschky (APD), value: $ 459.000 (2010-2013)

Research outcomes:

Book:
S. Broomhall and J. Van Gent (eds): Governing Masculinities: Regulating Selves and Others in the Early Modern Period, currently under review with Ashgate Publishers (manuscript submitted in May 2010)

Refereed articles:
Van Gent, J. (50%,with S. Broomhall), “ Corresponding Affections: Emotional exchange among William the Silent’s children”, Journal of Family History, April 2009, volume 34, issue 2, pp. 143-165. (which is ERA ranked A)
Van Gent, J. (50% , with S. Broomhall), “In the name of the father: Conceptualising pater familias in the letters of Willem the Silent’s children”, Renaissance Quarterly, Winter 2009, volume 62, issue 4, pp. 1130-1166. ( which is ERA ranked A*)

5. Gendered emotions in the early modern world

This project brings together my long-standing interest in the history of emotions which I first developed in my PhD on Swedish witchcraft and which is expanded upon in my current work on the Nassau family and also in the study of Moravian missions. I am particularly interested in the representation of gender and early modern emotions in contemporary museums and exhibitions.
This project will be carried out as part of the ARC Centre of Excellence “The History of Emotions”.

Grant:
Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence “ The History of Emotions”, value: $ 24.2 Mill (2011-2017)

I am currently a Chief Investigator in the Shaping the Modern Program at The University of Western Australia. My projects explore the role emotions play in shaping early modern and late colonial encounters with indigenous people and cultures. My work explores (i) emotions, conversions and missions, (ii) affective strategies of early modern Europeans in the acquisition, exchange and display of colonial objects, and (iii) the role of emotions in early ethnographic texts and collections.

English
German
Dutch
Swedish