The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is pleased to announce that Jim Hoesterey has been awarded the Shorenstein Fellowship for 2009-2010. This Fellowship is made possible through the generosity of Walter H. Shorenstein. The Fellowship supports a scholar to conduct research and writing on contemporary political, economic, or social change in the Asia-Pacific region, or topics in international relations and international political economy.

Jim Hoesterey is a cultural anthropologist whose research explores the burgeoning industry of Islamic self-help in contemporary Indonesia. He is completing a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he also received a M.A. in Anthropology. Jim also holds an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina and a B.A. in Psychology from Marquette University.

During two years of ethnographic fieldwork (2005-07) at the Islamic school and “Heart Management” training complex of television preacher Abdullah Gymnastiar, Jim sought to understand how a new generation of popular preachers and Muslim “trainers” has garnered novel forms of psycho-religious authority within the market niche of Islamic self-help.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Jim will work on his book manuscript, Sufis and Self-help Gurus: Postcolonial Psychology, Religious Authority, and Muslim Subjectivity in Indonesia.