A Cartography of Jewish and Muslim Women in Australian Higher Education: Mapping the Affects of Intersectional Differences on Relationships & Worldviews

<p dir="ltr">This research is conducted at a pivotal moment in university history when political flows associated with the global neoliberal economy are epistemically (re)defining what constitutes a 'good' education (Burke & Lumb, 2018; Connell, 2019). These changes occur in convergence with the hyper-scrutiny of Jewish and Muslim bodies in Australian higher education (hereafter, HE). This notoriety emerges through media stories of events such as 9/11, the Christchurch attack and the Israeli strikes on Palestine that produce strong affective flows. As diffractive ripples (Barad, 2007) spread out across the rhizome of Australian HE, they produce effects that matter for Jewish and Muslim women on campus. </p><p dir="ltr">This cartography (Braidotti, 2019a) is a theoretically rich and empirically grounded map of the geo-political and historical flows producing the experiences of 18 Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women at universities located on the East Coast of Australia. My trans-disciplinary approach utilises Rosi Braidotti's (2013, 2019a, 2021a) feminist posthuman scholarship to open up new modes of thinking and doing in the world. I build my argument using Gary Bouma, Anna Halafoff, and Greg Barton's (2022) concept of Worldview Complexity that maps flows of "superdiversity, multiple pluralities and religious complexity" (p. 198), not only between phenomena but also between bodies entangled within a single phenomenon. Diversity within phenomenon is evident in my sample of 10 Muslim women whose origins in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan and Syria shape their enactment of Islam. Worldview Complexity also produces powerful insights into differences emerging within the worldviews of my eight Jewish participants as a result of the diversity within sects, identities and practices of Judaism.</p><p dir="ltr">The interviews and images that produced the new data for this project were collected in 2021 during the COVID-19 lockdown. My discussion centres on everyday material intra-actions with food and clothing, holidays and rituals, and affective communities of belonging that produce my participants as 'religious', 'woman' and 'student'. I map these events within the contradictory and converging geo-political and historical flows that construct HE as 'secular', 'Christian', and 'pluralist'. In conclusion, I summarise the patterns of effects produced by being a religious and gendered woman in Australian HE and provide recommendations for university communities to create affirmative practices that support and are enriched by Jewish and Muslim women. </p><p dir="ltr">My thesis provides a space of creative becoming in which the paradigmatic differences of writer, reader, participants, literature and more-than-human actants provide a multi-centred and creative base from which to transform negative flows that impede religious women in HE into opportunities for connection and growth.</p>