Lilianne Fan
Columbia University, Anthropology, Alumnus
- Philosophy Of Language, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy Of Law, Poetry, Michel Foucault, History and Memory, and 88 moreJacques Derrida, Legal History, Walter Benjamin, Holocaust Studies, French language, Transitional Justice, Governmentality, Giorgio Agamben, Legal Anthropology, History, Writing and Memory, Roland Barthes, Hannah Arendt, Loss and Trauma, Sacrifice (Anthropology Of Religion), History of International Legal Thought, Mahmood Mamdani, Paul De Man, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Languages and Linguistics, Literature, Islamic Studies, Continental Philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, French Literature, Martin Heidegger, Islamic Law, War Studies, International Humanitarian Law, Biopolitics, Judith Butler, Arabic Literature, Genocide Studies, Kierkegaard, Buddhist Philosophy, Fascism, Jacques Lacan, 19th-century German philosophy, Political Islam, Paul Ricoeur, Arabic Philosophy, War Theory, Totalitarianism, Carl Schmitt, Myths and Symbols as carriers of unconscious content, Freud and Lacan, Testimony, Death and Dying, Mourning and Remembrance, Helene Cixous, Sacred (Philosophy), Language and Desire, Derrida Studies, Refugees, Refugee memory, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, Sigmund Freud, Aceh Studies, Sacred Music, Prayer, Sociology of Religion, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, Ethnography, Anthropology, Art History, Pierre Bourdieu, Intellectual History, Identity and Alterity, Medieval History, History of Religion (Medieval Studies), Forgiveness, Sacred and Profane, Sufism, Ottoman Empire, Mysticism, Silence, Oral Traditions, Gender and Sexuality, Women's History, The Sublime, Musicology, Exile, Mythology, Semiotics, Edmond Jabès, Monasticism, Theology, and Ancient Philosophyedit
- I received an MA in Anthropology from Columbia University in 2004. I conducted research on the Aceh War (1873–1914) a... moreI received an MA in Anthropology from Columbia University in 2004. I conducted research on the Aceh War (1873–1914) and the way in which Dutch colonial scholar-administrator Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and legal scholar Cornelis van Vollenhoven contributed to the conceptualisation and codification of a distinction between 'Islam' and 'Adat' (customary law), first in Aceh and then elsewhere in the Dutch East Indies. I received my BA in Comparative Philosophy and Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research.
Professionally, I started working with conflict-affected refugees in 1999, with a particular focus on refugees from Aceh and Myanmar. After the 2004 tsunami, I worked with international humanitarian organisations in post-crisis contexts, including 4 years in Aceh, Indonesia with various organisations (including Oxfam, UNDP, the International Finance Corporation, and as a member of the Governor of Aceh's advisory team). From 2008 to 2010 I worked in Myanmar with the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force, as Advisor to the ASEAN Special Envoy on Post-Nargis Recovery. From mid-2010, I served in post-earthquake Haiti for a year with the UN-led Cluster System, as Housing, Land and Property Coordinator in the Shelter Cluster. From 2012-2014, I worked as a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London, in the Humanitarian Policy Group.
In 2014, I co-founded the Geutanyoe Foundation with humanitarian and human rights leaders in Aceh, and we now run programmes in Aceh and Malaysia assisting and empowering internally displaced and refugee communities in education, health and youth leadership. I also chair the Rohingya Working Group for the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN).
My research expertise includes religious violence and ethnic conflict in Myanmar, with a particular focus on the Rohingya statelessness crisis in Rakhine State, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia; anthropological analysis of Rohingya culture, notions and social organisation; and the role of regional organisations in humanitarian action (with a focus on ASEAN and the OIC).
I am writing a book on history, memory, loss and legacies of violence in Aceh, which I hope to publish at some point when time permits.
Languages:
Mother Tongue/Fluent: English, Indonesian /Malay
Advanced: French; Acehnese
Intermediate: Mandarin
Beginners: Arabic, Italianedit
An opinion piece on ASEAN's responsibilities towards refugees in the region, on the occasion of the 26th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 26-27 April 2015. This piece was published in The Malaysian Insider on 25 April 2015.
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Marking the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the author reflects on the importance of learning about racism’s history in our efforts to build a future without it.
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On 24 November 2014, the government of Gayo Lues district in Aceh Province held a historic mass Saman performance, to mark the recognition of Saman by UNESCO as 'intangible cultural heritage in urgent need of safeguarding'. This piece is... more
On 24 November 2014, the government of Gayo Lues district in Aceh Province held a historic mass Saman performance, to mark the recognition of Saman by UNESCO as 'intangible cultural heritage in urgent need of safeguarding'. This piece is a reflection on the Saman dance and its place in the Gayo cultural universe.
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This paper traces the history of "Adat" (custom) as it emerged as an anthropological and legal category in the Dutch East Indies through the work of two of the Netherlands' most prominent colonial scholars: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and... more
This paper traces the history of "Adat" (custom) as it emerged as an anthropological and legal category in the Dutch East Indies through the work of two of the Netherlands' most prominent colonial scholars: Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and Cornelis Van Vollenhoven. Through a detailed examination of Hurgronje's ethnographic analysis of the Aceh War (1873–1914), the paper argues that "adat" and "Islam" were conceived dialectically as two sides of the same colonial dilemma.
Research Interests: Islamic Law, Indigenous Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Legal Anthropology, Law and Religion, and 16 moreIndonesian Studies, History of Anthropology, Legal Pluralism, Customary Law, Ethnography of Religion, Colonialism (Law), Colonial Archives, Holy War, Orientalism, Jihad, Acehnese history, Anti-Colonialism, Dutch East Indies, Colonial Knowledge, Religious and Political Violence, and Colonial Anthropology
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An opinion piece on the 2012 violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar and the risk of radicalisation in the wider region. Published in Al Jazeera, Nov 2012.
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This working paper critically examines the concept of ‘build back better’, and seeks to understand the aspirations, implications and resulting impact of the term on recovery and reconstruction in three disaster responses - the 2004 Indian... more
This working paper critically examines the concept of ‘build back better’, and seeks to understand the aspirations, implications and resulting impact of the term on recovery and reconstruction in three disaster responses - the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Aceh, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It asks the questions: What does ‘better’ look like? Better for whom, where, how? Is it ethical in humanitarian terms to exploit people’s vulnerability after a disaster to drive social change? And to what extent can questions of inequality, deeply rooted in politics and history, be addressed by humanitarian actors at all?
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The paper seeks to link contemporary thinking on urban shelter in the humanitarian sector to debates in the field of critical urban theory. It argues that current humanitarian thinking on urban shelter shares many common concerns with... more
The paper seeks to link contemporary thinking on urban shelter in the humanitarian sector to debates in the field of critical urban theory. It argues that current humanitarian thinking on urban shelter shares many common concerns with critical urban theory, but that these concerns are rarely translated effectively into humanitarian practice. It attributes this disconnect not only to weaknesses in implementation capacity, but also to the need to reorient humanitarian action to address more definitively questions of power and justice. Humanitarian actors need to step back from product-delivery approaches and find ways of integrating into their analytical, planning, implementation and monitoring tools questions about access, exclusion and the historically specific ways in which these aspects converge in particular urban spaces. By doing so, the humanitarian community would benefit from a more explicit, systematic and sustained engagement with the catalytic theoretical resources that critical urban theory has to offer. The cases of post-tsunami Aceh and post-earthquake Haiti are analysed in-depth.