In the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at UNNC, we have a great many research-active academics who lecture about creative topics from all around the world. One of our schools – the School of International Communications – has three professors who have all published books in the past year: Associate Professor Dr. Mary J. Ainslie, Assistant Professor Dr. Celia Lam and Assistant Professor Dr. Wyatt Moss Wellington. We caught up with Mary to ask her about her research and her future plans.
Please tell us about your new book!
It is called ‘Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Malaysia: Malay Nationalism, Philosemitism and Pro-Israel Expressions’ and is available from Palgrave Macmillan. It came out in August 2019 and was the culmination of 3 years of research and writing.
What inspired you to write about this topic?
I was a professor on the Nottingham Campus in Malaysia for 5 years, during that time I came into contact with a lot of Malaysian people who were very interested in Israel and expressed strong curiosity about Judaism and this country. I realized that these voices weren’t being heard, and that there was virtually no research into this phenomenon. Being someone who is very fond of Israel, visited many times and has a lot of friends there, I was motivated to study Malaysian attitudes towards Israel, particularly from people who were very interested in learning about this country.
How did you conduct the research?
First, there was the long process of gathering together all of the information about Malaysian attitudes to Israel. I went to bookstores and documented what was on display, I also trawled through Malaysian news pages for mentions of Israel and studied Social Media sites. Then I had to go over all the published literature about this topic, this laid the groundwork for beginning my participant-centric research. For this, I interviewed 30 Malaysian people who were interested in Israel and spoke to them about their feelings on this topic. This took a long time, some of the interviews were 4 hours long and everything had to be transcribed by research assistants.
What support did you receive in your research?
Nottingham University was very supportive of the research and I was able to gather a lot of participants through asking friends, colleagues and students. These participants then asked all of their social circles and gradually I was able to identify more and more people. However, the best support I received was from the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who funded the research. Since then I have set up an MOU for student exchange between the Hebrew University and Nottingham Ningbo.
Were there any surprises along the way?
I was really impressed by the range of diverse and complex opinions from my participants, it is always good to know that people are thinking and responding to their environment in new and interesting ways. I was also very pleased to see that so many young people, regardless of race and religion, are reading holocaust memoirs such as Anne Frank and learning from these. When the book finally came out, I received messages from around the globe telling me how important it is that I am writing on this topic, that was a nice surprise.
What are your future research plans now?
I haven’t stopped! My next book, an edited volume about cinema in Southeast Asia, will be published in summer 2020. I am also just about to have a paper published in China Quarterly Journal, which examines the history of Judaism in China.
Finally, what is your advice to students who would like to study and research in your topic?
Make sure that you choose a topic that resonates with your own interests and experience. Then, have a thorough grounding in the existing research about your topic before you begin.