Dr Enqi Weng is a media scholar and sociologist of religion. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Occasionally she teaches across media and religious studies units at Deakin.
She completed her PhD in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT University in 2018 and has since published her monograph Media Perceptions of Religious Changes in Australia: Of Dominance and Diversity (Routledge, 2020). Her doctoral thesis analysed media representation of religions in Australia, and revealed that public discussions about religion were not only primarily constructed and influenced by white male perspectives, British influences also problematically continued to shape these discussions in post-colonial Australia. Her research interest has since turned towards decolonial/multicultural approaches to the sociological study of religion, where her work interrogates the role that news media play in reinforcing and normalising the racialisation of religion.
Experience
2021–present
Research fellow, Deakin University
2019–2021
Sessional research fellow, Deakin University
Education
2018
RMIT University, PhD, School of Media and Communications
2012
University of Melbourne, MA, Global Media Communications
2003
National University of Singapore, BA, Arts and Social Sciences
Publications
2021
‘Swamped by Muslims’ and facing an ‘African gang’ problem: racialized and religious media representations in Australia, Continuum
2020
Media Perceptions of Religious Changes in Australia: Of Dominance and Diversity,
2019
Through a National Lens Darkly: Religion as a Spectrum, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion
2016
'The Heavens Opened and Cried': Mediatised National Mourning for Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, Asian Communication Research
Grants and Contracts
2021
(Con)spirituality, Science and the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia: Material and Digital Practices
Role:
Co-Investigator
Funding Source:
International Research Network for Science and Belief in Society
Professional Memberships
The Australian Sociological Association
Australian Association for the Study of Religion
International Society for the Sociology of Religion