Lene Pedersen

Lene Pedersen is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Museum Studies at Central Washington University. She is a cultural anthropologist with expertise in political, environmental, and visual anthropology. Pedersen, a native of Denmark who grew up in Tanzania, received her BA and Honors Degrees in Anthropology and Foreign Languages from University of Alaska Fairbanks and her PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Southern California. Prior to starting her job at CWU, she held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Australian National University. She has carried out research in Indonesia since 1997, mainly in East Bali, with focus on local governance, resource management, and inter-religious relationships. Her NSF funded project on ‘Integrated Field Research and Spatial Analysis of Multiple Modalities of Political Change’ (BCS-0964432) investigates the changing structures and meanings of ties between political actors in Indonesia’s hybrid system of governance whose newly decentralized political system intersects with older, multi-level traditional systems. Her published work includes the book, Ritual and World Change in a Balinese Princedom, two chapters in edited volumes on ‘Negotiating Religious Identities Within Majority-Minority relationships in Bali and Lombok and ‘Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context.’ She also edited a special issue on ‘Communal Peace and Conflict in Indonesia: Navigating Inter-Religious Boundaries,’ to which she contributed an introduction to ‘Religious Pluralism in Indonesia,’ and she has published articles on ‘State Decentering and Irrigated Rice Production in Bali’ (with Wiwik Dharmiasih),and ‘Responding to Indonesian Decentralization: A Perspective from a Balinese Princedom.’ She is editor and contributor to the film-review column of the General Anthropology Division Bulletin (the American Anthropological Association).