Dr Sara Niner

• Dr. Sara Niner is an interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer in Anthropology with the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Before becoming an academic she spent many years working with the East Timorese diaspora in Australia followed by many years working and researching in Timor-Leste.
• She is an expert in the field of gender and international development with a particular interest in those issues in the post-conflict environment of Timor-Leste and is widely published in this field.  As a regional gender expert, Dr Niner has often worked and reported on gender issues in S. E. Asia for local and international development agencies. She is currently undertaking research through the Oxfam Monash Partnership  of Oxfam partnered Savings and Loans Schemes in Timor-Leste. Further work on the links between gender inequity, empowerment and the economy is also being developed with a network of researchers focussed on the Asia Pacific.
• She recently convened a public seminar Crocodiles in the Timor Sea: development implications where her presentation reported on recent research which uncovered little know details about the culture of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs in their negotiations over the maritime resources in the Timor Sea.
• As part of an ongoing program of research into the politics of gender in Timor-Leste she is  undertaking new research into Masculinities in Timor-Leste building on a 2013 study into young men in Timor-Leste and their attitudes to gender roles, relationships and violence which informed a gender-based violence prevention campaign.
• A new book Women and the politics of gender in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste, Women in Asia Series, has just been published with Routledge in the UK  More info here and launched in London in December 2016
• She is also the editor of To Resist is to Win: the Autobiography of Xanana Gusmão with selected letters and speeches (Aurora Books, Melbourne, 2000) and author of Xanana: Leader of the Struggle for Independent Timor-Leste (Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2009) which was translated into Portuguese as Xanana: Líder da luta pela independência de Timor-Leste (Don Quixote Publishing: Lisbon 2011). To commemorate Gusmao’s 70th birthday she also published ‘‘What a piece of work is a man!: Xanana Gusmao at 70’, and Xanana Gusmao: of paintballs and power.

Recent Blogs

• 2018 Why microfinance as aid isn’t enough to empower women, The Conversation View article here
• 2018 It’s time for women to lead in Timor-Leste. La Croix International  View article here

new chapter in The Palgrave Handbook on Gender and Development: Critical engagements in feminist theory and practice

Very happy Spike Peterson has this to say about my new chapter in The Palgrave Handbook on Gender and Development: Critical engagements in feminist theory and practice :
"Sara Niner’s years of field work and engagement with the historical struggles and current politics of Timor-Leste provide a rich case study of gender within and beyond militarized conflicts. She notes that this small nation is both marginalized and underdeveloped, yet embedded in and affected by the global order because of its location and oil resources. The case study of Timor’s long colonial history and decades of violent occupation by Indonesian forces – with the complicity of Western powers – substantiates in many respects the analytical critiques foregrounded by myself, Khalid and Turcotte. Extensive, painful details demonstrate the practice and resilience of gender-dichotomized affect, experience, violence and valorization, for example, (re)privileging (militarized) masculinity, devaluing women’s contributions, and denying female combatants recognition or welfare. Niner also notes the complexity of constructively addressing emotionally invested memories, resentments and commitments that typically attend decades of conflict and continue into post-conflict politics."

Archival photo of Xanana and Mauk Moruk

This is an archival photo widely circulated and printed from 1983--the time of the Peace Talks with the Indonesian military.





Legend: Xanana Gusmao with members of the Resistance Command, talking to guerillas about the ceasefire. Left to Right: Ologari Aswain, Mauk Moruk, Bere Lalai Laka, Mau Hudo, Kilik, Lere Anan Timur, Ma'Huno, and at the front of the image with tape reocorder, Salvador Monteiro, at Gattot, Bibileu, Viqueque, Central-Nakroma Region

This photo is on file at the Resitance Museum in Dili (no. 05358.002.079) and my translation of their caption is above.