Drexler, Elizabeth
(Ph.D. University of Washington, 2001)
Assistant Professor

Department of Anthropology
Michigan State University
326 Baker Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
Fax: 517-432-2363
Drexler@msu.edu

ELIZABETH DREXLER, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, currently conducts research in Aceh, Indonesia and East Timor. Her research projects explore how societies address the legacies of past violence, emphasizing the relationships among institutions, transnational interventions, historical narratives and memory as they intersect in both violence and law. She is currently completing a book manuscript Securing the Insecure State: Paranoia, History and Violence in Aceh and Indonesia (under contract with University of Pennsylvania Press) which examines violence as both discourse and materiality tracing how one converts into the other in an escalating spiral of conflict. As a Fulbright New Century Scholar (2003-4), Drexler initiated a research project examining how institutional forms such as tribunals and truth commissions shape individual and collective narratives about past violence in Indonesia and East Timor and how such narratives contribute to the process by which institutions of governance become personally, socially and politically legitimate. To further explore these issues in comparative perspective, she co-organized a workshop at the Rockefeller Brothers Bellagio Study Center that brought together practitioners working in conflict regions and scholars working on narrative, trauma, and conflict.

In both research and teaching, Drexler is committed to innovative uses of social theory to address contemporary global issues in ways that contribute to both political and scholarly debates. She teaches courses on Social Theory, Ethnographic Methods, Globalization and Justice, Indonesian Culture and Politics, Violence and Memory. Drexler is a core faculty member in Asian Studies, Women in Development, and the Peace and Justice Studies Specialization.

A few recent publications include:

• 2006 History and Liability in Aceh Indonesia: Single Bad Guys and Convergent Narratives American Ethnologist 33 (3): 313-326.
• 2006 Provoking Separatism, Authenticating Violence: Aceh’s Humanitarian Pause. In Violent Conflicts in Indonesia edited by Charles Coppel. Routldege.
• Securing the Insecure State: Paranoia, History and Violence in Aceh and Indonesia. ( Book manuscript under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press)
• Forthcoming (expected 2007) Addressing the Legacies of Mass Violence and Genocide in East Timor and Indonesia: Truth, Memory and Corruption. In Genocide: Truth, Memory and Representation edited by Alex Hinton and Kevin O’Neill. Duke University Press.