Joy Aquino Siapno

Joy Siapno is a scholar and musician. She was born in the Philippines, raised in California, and lived in East Timor. Her family immigrated to Oakland, California, US in 1981. She has reading, writing, and speaking fluency in several Southeast Asian languages including Tetun (East Timor/ Timor Leste), Acehnese (Sumatra, Indonesia), Bahasa Indonesia, Malay, Tagalog, and Pangasinan (Philippine languages). She completed her B.A. Degree in Political Science at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where she received a scholarship; her Master's Degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK; and her Ph.D. Degree at the University of California-Berkeley, US.

Her first teaching job after completing her Ph.D. was teaching Southeast Asian History and Politics to first generation refugees and immigrants from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries, at Univ. of California- Riverside. Since then, she has held teaching and research positions at the following universities: in Catalonia, Spain (Universitat Jaume I, Castellon, teaching under the Cátedra UNESCO de Filosofía para la Paz, 2007-2009); Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Luce Fellowship, 1999-2000; University of Melbourne, Departments of Political Science and the Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies, Assistant Professor, Lecturer Level B, Tenured, 2000-2007. She negotiated with University of Melbourne to reduce her full-time job in order to help build Universidade Dili and Universidade da Paz in East Timor/ Timor Leste from 2001-2007 (where she worked as Vice Rector 1, part-time). She also taught at the Departments of Economics and Social and Political Sciences at the Universidade Nacional Timor Leste (2008-9). From 2009- 2012, she was an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University, South Korea. After that, she was a Visiting Research Scholar/Professor in Kyoto University, at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Japan from 2012-2013.

From 1999-2007, she worked as the Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (EWIC), published by Leiden: Brill. Before moving to East Timor and Australia in 1999, she taught at the University of California-Berkeley, as a Ph.D. Student and Teaching Assistant, 1992-1996; Univ. of California- Riverside, as a Visiting Professor in 1997; and Univ. of California Irvine -- Humanities Research Institute: in 1995 (with the residential seminar on "Feminism and Discourses of Power" with Judith Butler and Wendy Brown) and in 1998-1999 (with the residential seminar on "Gender and Citizenship in Muslim Communities").

She has extensive experience as a trainer, fund-raiser, and focused-group facilitator with social-political-economic-ecological movements, including Partido Democratico (PD, in Timor Leste) founded by Fernando La Sama de Araujo, the former Secretary-General of RENETIL and founder of PD; the School of Democratic Economics (founded by Dr. Hendro Sangkoyo) based in Jakarta, Indonesia; the Forum for Philippine Alternatives (founded by Dr. Walden Bello, also the founder of Focus on the Global South); and the International Forum for Aceh (founded by Jafar Siddiq Hamzah).

In 1999, she moved to East Timor where she supported her husband in the August 1999 Referendum for Independence, built a home and raised a family. She also helped co-found Universidade da Paz, Centro Para a Mulher e Estudos do Genero, and set-up a Music Education Program for piano, cello, and ensemble music (see youtube under "Making Music in Timor Leste": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vujWUQFgb8o ; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8jNCTD-5ww). After her husband's death, she and her son moved to California.

For some of her published works, see:

https://independent.academia.edu/JacquelineSiapno