(L to R): Dr. Tineke Hellwig, Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh, Dr. Clare Crowston
On May 26, 2026, a reception was held to celebrate the recipients of various awards across the Faculty of Arts and present the Dean’s Awards to this year’s honourees.
Our Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Popular Culture and Department Head, Sharalyn Orbaugh, was appointed as one of two 2026 recipients of the Dean of Arts Award.
This annual award recognizes faculty members who have made exceptional contributions to teaching, research, leadership, and community engagement which have proven transformative to the Faculty of Arts. The award is given in the name of a living Professor Emeritus/Emerita, chosen by the award recipient, who has made a significant contribution to the Faculty of Arts and has been an inspiration to the award recipient.
Dr. Orbaugh was honoured for nearly three decades of teaching across Japanese literature, visual culture, and gender studies, and for her leadership as Head of Asian Studies since 2020.
Dr. Orbaugh named Asian Studies Professor Emerita Dr. Tineke Hellwig as her co-recipient, and explained why she chose to accept the award in Dr. Hellwig’s name:
When I arrived at UBC in 1997, jointly appointed in Asian Studies (.66) and Women’s Studies (.33), Dr. Tineke Hellwig was already an important figure in both units. She was working to transform the Department of Asian Studies by promoting attention to women’s studies and gender and sexuality studies, as well as by building institutional supports for the real-life careers of women and racialized scholars.
As Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Programme from 2001 to 2004, Tineke ensured that critical race theory and careful attention to cultural specificity were integral parts of the programme’s curriculum and scholarly mission, an important corrective to the universalizing tendency of much women’s studies and feminist scholarship before that time. She was both a colleague and an inspiring mentor, and the diversity and strength of the Asian Studies department today owes much to principles and initiatives that Tineke fostered.
Dr. Tineke Hellwig and Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh pose together at the reception
Dr. Tineke Hellwig received her PhD in Malay and Indonesian Literature from the University of Leiden in 1990, and taught courses on Southeast Asian literature and culture, Indonesian language and more in the Department of Asian Studies as a research stream faculty member from 1989 until her retirement in 2014.
She also dedicated her time across the faculty and university by serving on various committees such as the Executive Committee for the Centre for Southeast Asian Research and in roles such as Chair of the Status of Women Committee on the Executive of the Faculty Association, in addition to the many committees she served within the Department.
Dr. Hellwig’s publications show her commitment to feminist and post-colonial studies. Her first monograph, In the Shadow of Change: Images of Women in Indonesian Lilterature (1994; published in Indonesian translation in 2003) focused on representations of women and gender ideologies portrayed in fiction published between 1937 and 1986, during which time Indonesia developed from a Dutch colony to an independent nation.
