Dr Benjamin Hegarty

Dr Benjamin Hegarty

Senior Research Associate

PhD (ANU); MA (Monash); BA (Griffith)

Medicine & Health
The Kirby Institute

Benjamin Hegarty is a medical anthropologist and Senior Research Associate in the Asia and Pacific Health Program at the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney and Research Affiliate at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. His ethnographic research draws on queer theory and transgender studies to explain how gender and sexuality influences social and health inequities. His research has investigated this concern primarily among transgender communities in Indonesia, with whom he has conducted long-term, collaborative and interdisciplinary projects related to gender, sexual, and reproductive health. His first book, The Made-Up State: Trans Femininity, Technology, and Citizenship in Indonesia, was published by Cornell University Press in 2022. It was awarded the 2023 Anne Bolin and Gilbert Herdt Book Prize by the Human Sexuality Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association. 

Within the Asia and Pacific Health Program, he is drawing on collaborative approaches to ethnographic methods to work with colleagues in Papua New Guinea, to better understand the interplay between health and human rights for key populations. He is also leading a Australian Human Rights Institute-funded research project, Transgender rights and health in Indonesia: A rapid ethnographic assessment, which investigates access to legal and medical forms of gender affirmation and its impact on health for transgender communities in Indonesia. This research is supported by the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW Sydney and the Center for HIV AIDS Research at Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta, Indonesia.

From September 2024 until June 2025, he will be on leave from the Asia and Pacific Health Program at the Kirby Institute, to take up a position at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Paris funded by a highly competitive French Institutes for Advanced Studies (FIAS) Fellowship entitled Symbiotic viruses: More-than-human anthropology, queer theory, and virology. Bringing together scientists from the Pasteur Institute and Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), the project will investigate the symbiotic possibility of viruses through an empirical, multisited account of the human pegivirus. 

Phone
+61-2-9348-0046
Location
The Kirby Institute, Level 6, Wallace Wurth Building UNSW SYDNEY 2052
  • Books | 2022
    Hegarty B, 2022, The Made-Up State Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia, Cornell University, https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501766671/the-made-up-state/#bookTabs=1
  • Book Chapters | 2024
    Hegarty B; Handayani AP; Nanwani S; Praptoraharjo I, 2024, 'HIV outreach for men who have sex with men during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, 2020-2021', in Viral Times: Reflections on the COVID-19 and HIV Pandemics, pp. 193 - 206, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003322788-17
    Book Chapters | 2024
    Hegarty B; Handayani AP; Nanwani S; Praptoraharjo I, 2024, 'HIV outreach for men who have sex with men during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, 2020–2021', in Garcia Iglesias J; Nagington M; Aggleton P (ed.), Viral Times: Reflections on the COVID-19 and HIV Pandemics, Routledge, London; New York, pp. 193 - 206, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003322788-17/
    Book Chapters | 2023
    Hegarty B, 2023, 'Transgender Citizenship and Public Gender in Indonesia', in Bexley A; Dong SX; Setyonaluri D (ed.), Gender Equality and Diversity in Indonesia Identifying Progress and Challenges, Iseas - Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, pp. 53 - 69, https://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/publication/7876
    Book Chapters | 2022
    Hegarty B, 2022, 'An inter-Asia history of transpuan in Indonesia', in Queer Southeast Asia, pp. 15 - 32, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003320517-2
  • Journal articles | 2024
    Hegarty B, 2024, 'A queer footnote: The anthropology of containment', American Ethnologist, 51, pp. 84 - 89, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.13231
    Journal articles | 2022
    Hegarty B, 2022, 'Identity Cards, Semiotic Instability, and Signs of State Recognition for Indonesian Warias', Visual Anthropology Review, 39, pp. 178 - 198, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/var.12274
    Journal articles | 2022
    Hegarty B, 2022, 'Sex, crime and entertainment: Images of LGBT in the Indonesian news media', Indonesia and the Malay World, 50, pp. 33 - 51, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639811.2022.2035074
    Journal articles | 2021
    Hegarty B; Handayani A; Nanwani S; Praptoraharjo I, 2021, 'Chasing targets in a pandemic: The impact of COVID-19 on HIV outreach workers for MSM (men who have sex with men) in Jakarta, Indonesia', Global Public Health, 16, pp. 1681 - 1695, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2021.1980599
    Journal articles | 2021
    Hegarty B, 2021, 'Governing Nonconformity: Gender Presentation, Public Space, and the City in New Order Indonesia', Journal of Asian Studies, 80, pp. 955 - 974, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021911821000747
    Journal articles | 2021
    Hegarty B, 2021, 'The Biosocial Body: HIV Visibility in an Age of Pharmaceutical Treatment in Indonesia', Ethos, 49, pp. 460 - 474, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/etho.12325
    Journal articles | 2021
    MALLAY R; HEGARTY B; NANWANI S; PRAPTORAHARJO I, 2021, 'One transgender community's experience of the covid-19 pandemic', Transgender Studies Quarterly, 8, pp. 386 - 393, http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/23289252-9009003
    Journal articles | 2020
    Hegarty B; Nanwani S; Praptoraharjo I, 2020, 'Understanding the challenges faced in community-based outreach programs aimed at men who have sex with men in urban Indonesia', Sexual Health, 17, pp. 352 - 358, http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/SH20065
    Journal articles | 2019
    Hegarty B, 2019, 'Liminal Masculinity: Narratives of Class and Sexuality in Post-authoritarian Indonesia', Journal of Intercultural Studies, 40, pp. 334 - 346, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2019.1598955
    Journal articles | 2019
    Hegarty B, 2019, 'The Perfect Woman: Transgender Femininity and National Modernity in New Order Indonesia, 1968-1978', JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, 28, pp. 44 - 65, http://dx.doi.org/10.7560/JHS28102
    Journal articles | 2019
    Marshall D; Aggleton P; Cover R; Rasmussen ML; Hegarty B, 2019, 'Queer generations: Theorizing a concept', International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22, pp. 558 - 576, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367877918821262
    Journal articles | 2018
    Hegarty B; Marshall D; Aggleton P; Cover R; Rasmussen M, 2018, 'Heterosexuality and Race in the Australian Same-Sex Marriage Postal Survey', Australian Feminist Studies, 33, pp. 400 - 416, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2018.1536441
    Journal articles | 2018
    Hegarty B, 2018, 'Under the Lights, Onto the Stage Becoming Waria through National Glamour in New Order Indonesia', TSQ-TRANSGENDER STUDIES QUARTERLY, 5, pp. 355 - 377, http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/23289252-6900738
    Journal articles | 2017
    Hegarty B, 2017, 'The Value of Transgender Waria Affective Labor for Transnational Media Markets in Indonesia', TSQ-TRANSGENDER STUDIES QUARTERLY, 4, pp. 78 - 95, http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3711553
    Journal articles | 2017
    Hegarty B, 2017, '‘No Nation of Experts’: Kustom Tattooing and the Middle-Class Body in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia', Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 18, pp. 135 - 148, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2016.1269833
    Journal articles | 2012
    Hegarty B, 2012, 'Late Japanese New Wave Documentary and Cinematic Truth: Charting the Theory and Method of "Graphic Sensitivity" Towards Cultural Otherness', COLLOQUY-TEXT THEORY CRITIQUE, pp. 78 - 98, https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000421920700005&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=891bb5ab6ba270e68a29b250adbe88d1

  • 2023 American Anthropological Association, Anne Bolin and Gilbert Herdt Book Prize (best book in the field of human sexuality published in 2021/2022)
  • 2018 Australian Anthropological Society, PhD Thesis Prize (best PhD in the discipline of anthropology awarded in 2017/2018)
  • 2018 Australian National University, Gender Institute PhD Thesis Prize (runner up)