Professor Maria Jaschok
About
Professor Maria Jaschok is a Senior Research Associate of the Contemporary China Studies Programme and a member of the steering committee of the Masters in Women’s/Gender/Sexuality Studies in Humanities.
Her research interests are in the areas of gendered constructions of memory; feminist and aural ethnography; innovative research methodologies and uses of oral history in the writing of women’s history in Asian contexts. She has conducted collaborative research projects in central China since 1994, addressing issues and implications of growing female membership of religions for local citizenship and civil society.
Professor Jaschok has co-presented and co-authored with her Chinese collaborator, Shui Jingjun, in China and internationally, in Chinese and in English, seeking to make published findings fully accessible to their respective home audiences. Women, Religion, and Space in China, published by Routledge, forms the sequel to the study of female-led Islamic traditions in China, published in 2000/2002, entitled The History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam (Curzon/Routledge, published in paperback in 2015).
Most recently, Professor Jaschok has been collaborating with ethnomusicologists and anthropologists in a study of Islamic soundscapes in China and their function and place in recovery of ruptured collective memory (Leverhulme); the collaboration resulted in an edited volume Ethnographies of Islam in China (U. of Hawai’i Press, 2021). She is currently working on interpretations of Islamic chants as part of China’s women’s mosque long-standing oral tradition of teaching, worshipping, and celebration.
Professor Jaschok is a member of many international academic and professional organizations, serving on steering committees, editorial and advisory boards to contribute to the future of Chinese gender studies to academe at home and abroad. Among her roles: Member of Advisory Editorial Board for Gendering Asia series, NIAS, Copenhagen, Denmark. Member of International Advisory Board, Research Center of Translation Studies, China Women's University, Beijing, China. Member of Editorial Board, Berliner China-Hefte, Chinese History and Society. Berlin: Lit Verlag, Germany. Life Fellow of the Global China Academy, London, UK. Founder member of the Women’s Initiative on International Affairs in Asia, Hong Kong. Co-founder: Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Network (WAGNet) and Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Review (WAGRev).
Expertise
- Gender studies and modern China
- Women’s mosques and female imams in China
- Chinese feminisms
- Anthropology of Islam in China
- Family planning in China
- Researching in sensitive contexts
Selected publications
- Ethnographies of Islam in China (University of Hawai’i Press, 2021)
- The Sound of Faith: Chinese Women’s Mosques, Islamic Resurgence and Religious Agency (Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, 2021, Vol. 7, (3): 93-110)
- Covering Body, Uncovering Identity: Chinese Muslim Women’s Vocabularies of Dress, based on fieldwork in Northwest and Central China (Comparative Islamic Studies, doi: 10.1558/cis.28236, 2016)
- 'Outsiders Within': Speaking to Excursions Across Cultures (Researching Gender. Situated Knowers and Feminist Standpoint. Vol.1. SAGE Publications, 2013 (2000, Feminist Theory, 1(1), reprint))
- Women, Religion, and Space in China (Routledge NY, 2011)
- The History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam (Routledge, 2000/2015)
- Violation and Resistance: Women, Religion and Chinese Statehood (Violence Against Women, special issue, SAGE Publishers, 2003)
Media experience
Professor Maria Jaschok has experience of working with the media including interviews on BBC Radio 4 discussing gender and Islam in China, the state of religious education in China, women’s history and feminism in China and family planning. Most recently, Dr Jaschok has been addressing issues surrounding COVID-19 related racial discrimination, particularly concerning treatment of Chinese students.