Sonja Van Wichelen

Sonja Van Wichelen is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. She earned her BA and MA from Utrecht University and her PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam in 2007. Following her doctorate, she held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University from 2007 to 2009 and at Brown University from 2009 to 2010. She then served as a Research Fellow at Western Sydney University from 2010 to 2014, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney from 2015 to 2017, and Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley from 2017 to 2018. In 2020-2021, she was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

Her research focuses on the intersections of law, biology, and society in global contexts, particularly biolegality, which explores the relation between biology and law in forming knowledge and sociality. Other areas include cross-border reproductive technologies, global migration and citizenship, transnational adoption, science and technology studies, biotechnology, and religion, politics, and gender in Indonesia. She has authored books such as Religion, Politics and Gender in Indonesia: Disputing the Muslim Body (Routledge, 2010) and Legitimating Life: Adoption in the Age of Globalization and Biotechnology (Rutgers University Press, 2018). Selected publications include "Civilizing Migrants: Integration, Culture and Citizenship" (European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2012), "Polygamy Talk and the Politics of Feminism: Contestations over Masculinity in a New Muslim Indonesia" (Journal of International Women's Studies, 2009), and "Biolegality: How Biology and Law Redefine Sociality" (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2022). Van Wichelen has received the Sydney Research Accelerator (SOAR) Prize from the University of Sydney (2019), the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council (2014), and the Rubicon Award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2008). She supervises graduate students in science and technology studies and biotechnology, serves as Deputy Director of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, and leads initiatives such as advancing science communication for planetary health in Indonesia.

Professional Email: sonja.vanwichelen@sydney.edu.au