My life over the past 18 months has been radically shaped by the effects of long COVID.
At my very low-key lunch celebration of the publication of ‘Subjects and Aliens’, Hobart, 21 September 2023
I never fully recovered following my initial COVID-19 infection in July 2022, which was followed by two subsequent viral infections in August and September 2022, and I reduced my work hours in early 2023 me to help me ‘cope’ with my ongoing fatigue. I had COVID-19 a second time in April this year and, after the acute infection passed, my long COVID symptoms worsened, eventually resulting in a period of severe ill-health in late August which resulted in 6 weeks off work.
During this time off, I came to understand more about the nature of my illness better, including by reading The Long Covid Handbook, by Gez Medinger and Danny Altmann. I also have found science journalist Ed Yong’s writing on long COVID to be some of the best there is, if you want to understand more about it all, including the struggles ‘long haulers’ like me face.
Reflecting on what led me to this severe long COVID crash, I came to understand how the demands of academic life were not allowing me the time and space to begin to feel well again. With the support of my GP, I have now reduced my work hours to four mornings per week, and I have become very strict in policing my boundaries. This means that many, many things that I would like to be doing have necessarily been put aside – perhaps for now, perhaps forever. One of those things is my book on Chinese naturalisation, which at present I just don’t have the physical or mental capacity to contemplate. I am also stepping back from my role as coordinator of the Family History program at UTAS in 2024.
My long COVID symptoms include fatigue, post-exertional malaise (PEM), cognitive dysfunction (‘brain fog’, including issues with memory, word recall and verbal processing), orthostatic intolerance (including inability to stand for more than a few minutes and lightheadedness), exercise intolerance, insomnia, muscle aches and weakness, autonomic dysfunction, tinnitus, and more. Some days are better than others, but my symptoms are always worse when I do not pace myself and get sufficient rest, or when I am even remotely stressed. Alongside these physical symptoms have come a whole gamut of emotions – particularly grief and guilt about all the things I cannot do, but a lot of sadness, anger, frustration and boredom, too.
While my symptoms are not as bad as many with long COVID, and I’m not currently bedbound or housebound, my world has now shrunk very small. And every day is a tiresome balancing act of things that must be done, things that I’d like to do, and things that my body can cope with.
So, with all that said, I look at the list that follows with some amazement – how have I have managed to do all of this? (See my point above re the punishing demands of academic life.) Next year will necessarily be different, and I’m quite looking forward to that.
Things I’ve done in 2023
Course coordination of the UTAS Diploma of Family History and the Undergraduate Certificate in Family History, including course administration, marketing, student recruitment, and outreach work, such as:
Everyday Heritage Linkage project, including research administration, team meetings, our conference and workshops in Sydney in July, and research and planning for publications to come
PhD supervision, including primary supervision of Elizabeth Walsh at UTAS, and external supervision of Emma Bellino (University of Wollongong)
Peer review for ARC Discovery Projects Scheme, Manchester University Press (book proposal), International Journal of Heritage Studies (article)
Things I haven’t done in 2023
I declined a whole heap of invitations, including to review a book manuscript (HKU Press), journal articles (Ethnic and Racial Studies; Race and Social Problems; History Australia) and ARC Discovery Projects Scheme applications; media interviews and to be interviewed for a PhD project; to examine postgraduate theses (MRes at Macquarie University, PhD at James Cook University); to present my work at conferences and give public talks; and to contribute to publications (including book review for History Australia; book review for Asian Studies Review).
Research publications
‘Cartoonlets’ from ‘The Bulletin’, 20 June 1896, p 7, including one (bottom left) that refers to the use of identification photography in Chinese immigration administration in New Zealand. This was the subject of Sophie Couchman and my 2023 article in ‘Australian Historical Studies’.
Kate Bagnall and Peter Prince (eds), Subjects and Aliens: Histories of Nationality, Law and Belonging in Australia and New Zealand, ANU Press, Canberra, 2023, http://doi.org/10.22459/SA.2023.
Peter Prince and Kate Bagnall, ‘Australia’s “alien races” meet New Zealand’s “race aliens”’, in Kate Bagnall and Peter Prince (eds), Subjects and Aliens: Histories of Nationality, Law and Belonging in Australia and New Zealand, ANU Press, Canberra, 2023, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n11134/pdf/ch01.pdf.
Sophie Couchman and Kate Bagnall, ‘Identification photography and the surveillance of Chinese mobility in Colonial Australasia’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 299–329, https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2022.2162094.
Liew, Zhen Hao, ‘Julia T. Martínez, Kate Bagnall, eds. Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility between China and Australia. Crossing Seas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2021. viii + 277 pp. $72.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-988-8528-61-5′, H-Migration, November 2023, https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58708.
Bellanta, Melissa and Lorinda Cramer, ‘The comfort of things in White Australia: Male immigrants, race and the three-piece suit, c.1901–39′,Australian Historical Studies, 2023, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2022.2161587.
Berthiot, Marine, ‘Representations of girlhood trauma in Aotearoa, New Zealand literature written by women’, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2023, https://hdl.handle.net/1842/39741.
Byrne, Denis, Ien Ang, and Phillip Mar (eds), Heritage and History in the China-Australia Migration Corridor, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2023 – my work is cited in the following chapters:
Ang, Ien and Denis Byrne, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–24
Williams, Michael, ‘Villages of the Fragrant Hills’, pp. 21–51
Byrne, Denis, ‘A heritage of lifelines in the migration corridor’, pp. 52–74
Ang, Ien, ‘(Un)making transnational identities: migration and Chineseness’, pp. 75–105
Wong, Alexandra, ‘Diaspora tourism and homeland travel’, pp. 106–132
Byrne, Denis, ‘Making heritage in the migration corridor’, pp. 240–262.
Cotton, James, ‘Chungking follies: The supporting case of the Chungking Legation, 1941–42’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 109, part 2, December 2023, pp. 187–209.
Cutter, Nat, Rachel Fensham and Tyne Daile Sumner, ‘The slipperiness of name: Biography and gender in Australian cultural databases’,Gender & History,1–18,https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12699.
Indelicato, Maria ElenaIndelicato, ‘Neither black nor white: Colonial myths, Irish women, and Chinese men’s quest for respectability,Interventions, vol. 25, no. 4, 2023, pp. 448–467,https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2022.2099946.
Kong, Vivian, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Marston-Pattison, Aaron, ‘Un-Australian? White Australia’s visions of identity and the racialisation of the Pacific War’, Australian Historical Studies, 2023, pp. 1–19.
Rerceretnam, Marc Sebastian, ‘Quong Tart’s neighbours: Cycling around the boundaries of exclusion and racism, 1880s-1900s’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 109, part 2, December 2023, pp. 141–164.
Rizvi, Fazal, ‘China-Australia tensions and international higher education’, Beijing International Review of Education, vol. 4, no. 4, 2023, pp. 610–628, https://doi.org/10.1163/25902539-04040007.
Simmonds, Alecia, Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law, La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc., Melbourne, 2023.
Smith, Evan, ‘The Bureaucratic Limits of a National Security Agenda: The Winding Road of Alien Registration in Interwar Australia’,Australian Historical Studies, vol. 54, no. 1, 2023, pp. 24–43,https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2022.2125544.
Tarchi, Andrea, Building the Intimate Boundaries of the Nation: The Regulation of Mixed Intimacies in Colonial Libya and the Construction of Italian Whiteness (1911–1942), PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2023, https://doi.org/10.5463/thesis.93.
Tao, Yu, Benjamin Smith, Petra Mosmann, Kaylene Poon, and Betty Walker, ‘Searching for Moon Chow: A joint journey’, Life Writing, vol. 20, no. 1, 2023, pp. 217–236.
Thatcher, Louise, ‘Maritime workers, desertion, racism, and labour mobility in early 20th-century Australia’, Australian Studies Journal / Zeitschrift für Australienstudien, vol. 37, 2023, pp. 13–29, https://doi.org/10.35515/zfa/asj.37/2023.02.
It goes without saying that 2020 has been a strange and difficult year.
I started the year by moving from Canberra to Hobart, after three months of remote working in my new job at UTAS (as Senior Lecturer in Humanities and Course Coordinator of the Diploma of Family History). I was incredibly sad to be moving so far from Canberra, to be leaving our home of 20 years, to be uprooting my family and separating our kids from each other – the three big ones chose to remain, while the little one had to come with us. But it was also a relief to be leaving the thick smokey air and orange skies and anxiety and asthma that the bushfires had brought over December and January. Then, just as we were starting to feel a little bit settled in Hobart, COVID hit Australia. I had seen COVID come into the lives of friends in Guangdong and Macau, feeling very lucky that it wasn’t us who were in lockdown – but then we were too.
Of all the places in the world to spend 2020, Hobart has been pretty great. But being in a new job, in a new city, on an island cut off from family and friends on the mainland, in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, has been hard, so hard. And now, our plans of returning home to visit in the new year look unlikely due to the recent COVID outbreak in Sydney.
So, it’s with all that in mind that I’m writing this ‘year in review’ post – to help me see through my continually teary eyes that I’ve accomplished something at work this year. See the list below, if you want the details.
My biggest accomplishment this year hasn’t really been at work though. It’s been to get myself, my teenager and my tween through the year in more or less one piece, and to see them finally looking towards 2021 (and more particularly, 2021 in Hobart) with a sense of hope and perhaps even happiness. I couldn’t have achieved that without support from Tim, Sophie, Nicki and Molly the Labrador on the home front, and from my stellar colleague and font-of-Tasmanian-knowledge, Imogen, at work.
When we moved to Hobart I decided that wherever we lived, I needed to be able to see river and sky. I’m so glad that I did, because this was my work-from-home view for much of 2020.
Things I’ve accomplished at work this year
Here’s my list of work things I’m happy to have accomplished this year, in no particular order:
my probation at UTAS going through early, after 12 months (yay me!)
our major course changes for R2H Diploma of Family History for 2021 being approved by Senate – and being complimented on the excellence of my course change paperwork
preparing a proposal and gaining approval for my new unit, HAA108 Migrant Families, to be introduced into the Diploma of Family History in 2021
concurrently coordinating two units (HAA003 and HAA107) between July and September with a combined enrolment of over 900 students, with 6 tutors to manage – note to self: never do this again; you literally had 3 days where you didn’t work between June and October
revising HAA003 Introduction to Family History and developing 3 weeks’ content for our new unit, HTA206 Australian History in a Global Context, all done from home and taught online
finalising Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility between China and Australia, forthcoming with HKU Press in early 2021 – included working on the cover and marketing materials, commissioning and checking the index, and checking three rounds of proofs
submitting an application for the ARC Special Research Initiative for Australian Society, History and Culture with Julia Martínez and Sophie Couchman – we weren’t successful (only 7.1% of application were), but we were ranked between 10% to 25% of unsuccessful proposals within the scheme round (with three of the four selection criteria ranked at top 10%)
dealing with a plagiarism matter, where a PRC researcher had published an article, in Chinese in a PRC-based journal, that was largely based on my research
speaking via Zoom at the ‘Asia at the Crossroads: Ruptures and Hopes’ symposium, organised by the Melbourne-Monash Asia Studies Reading Group, on 31 July 2020
speaking with my UTAS colleague Imogen Wegman at Libraries Tasmania in Hobart for Family History Month on 13 August 2020
assisting/speaking to researchers/journalists: Kirsty Walsh (Who Do You Think You Are?), Ingrid Piper (commissioned by Australian Consulate, Hong Kong); Mell Chun (freelance journalist working on a project supported by a Judith Neilson and Walkley Fund grant)
being invited to participate in a three ARC applications (two I had to decline), including an ARC Linkage project with Tracy Ireland, Jane Lydon, Tim Sherratt and GML Heritage, which we submitted in December
being invited to contribute to two publications – an edited collection by Tony Ballantyne and a special journal issue on Chinese NZ/Australian history/heritage – in which I’ll write up more of my Chinese naturalisation research
progressing the Subjects and Aliens edited collection I’m working on with Peter Prince, with the aim of submitting it to a publisher in 2021
getting to work with some truly excellent colleagues at UTAS – with special mention to the professional staff who help me do my job better, in particular Carol, Melinda, Scott, and the wonderful young women in the Family History Contact Team this year, Maddy, Emma and Meredith
supervising my first Honours student, who achieved First Class Honours and also got herself a graduate job in the Department of Premier and Cabinet starting next year (yay Britt!)
beginning to think about and dig into Chinese Tasmanian history, particularly about Tasmanian Chinese family histories and how I might sneak Tasmania into my Chinese naturalisation book
‘My Native Land’, Examiner (Launceston), 22 December 1937, p. 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article52175815. Click image to see full article in Trove.
Where my work has been cited, 2019–2020
For the record, here are some publications from 2019 and 2020 that have cited my work. I’ve included 2019 here because I didn’t manage to publish a ‘2019 in review’ post last year (too busy settling into new job, selling our house, packing, etc).
Barnwell, Ashley, ‘Keeping the Nation’s Secrets: “Colonial Storytelling” within Australian Families’, Journal of Family History, 46, no. 1 (January 2021), pp. 46–61, https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199020966920.
Berthon, Hilary, ‘A Treasure Trove of Community Language Newspapers’, in Catherine Dewhirst and Richard Scully (eds), The Transnational Voices of Australia’s Migrant and Minority Press, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43639-1_11.
Charak, Sarah Edith, ‘Anglo-Jews and Eastern European Jews in a White Australia’, Honours Thesis, Department of History, University of Sydney, 2019, http://hdl.handle.net/2123/21137.
Cheng, Christopher, ‘Beacons of Modern Learning: Diaspora-Funded Schools in the China-Australia Corridor’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 29, no. 2 (June 2020), pp. 139–62, https://doi.org/10.1177/0117196820930309.
Chua, J.Y., ‘ “An Open and Public Scandal” in the Transvaal: The 1906 Bucknill Inquiry in a Global Context’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 29, no. 2 (2020), pp. 135–161.
Fitzpatrick, Matthew P. and Peter Monteath, ‘Amidst Empires: Colonialism, China and the Chinese’, in Peter Monteath and Matthew P. Fitzpatrick (eds), Colonialism, China and the Chinese, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019.
Gibson, Peter, and Simon Ville, ‘Australian Wool and Chinese Industrialization, 1901–1941’, Twentieth-Century China, 44, no. 3 (2019), pp. 265–287.
Kuo, Mei-fen, ‘The “Invisible Work” of Women: Gender and Philanthropic Sociability in the Evolution of Early Chinese Australian Voluntary Organisations’, in John Fitzgerald and Hon-ming Yip (eds), Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949, Hong Kong University Press, 2020.
Kuo, Mei-fen and John Fitzgerald, ‘Colonial Pathways to International Education: Chinese Students in White Australia in the 1920s’, in Peter Monteath and Matthew P. Fitzpatrick (eds), Colonialism, China and the Chinese, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019.
Kwok, Juanita, ‘Waltzing the Dragon with Benjamin Law’, History Australia, 17, no. 1 (2020), pp. 192–194.
Kwok, Juanita, ‘Chinese Mining on the Turon: From Beginning to End’, Journal of Australasian Mining History, 17 (Oct 2019), pp. 75–95.
McCarron, Barry. ‘ “Make it too hot for them to stop in the colony”: The Irish Stance on the Chinese Question in Australia, 1851–1901’, Australasian Journal of Irish Studies, 20 (2020), pp. 99–124.
Rhook, Nadia,‘ “The Chinese Doctor James Lamsey”: Performing Medical Sovereignty and Property in Settler Colonial Bendigo, Postcolonial Studies, 23, no. 1 (2020), pp. 58–78.
Robson, Charmaine, ‘Doctors’ Dilemma: Appraising the Rights of New South Wales Leprosy Sufferers, 1890–1950′, Health & History: Journal of the Australian & New Zealand Society for the History of Medicine, 22, no. 1 (2020), pp. 126–49.
Sawaki, Tomoko, ‘Interacting Voices Structure a Text: A Quantitative Investigation of Dialogic Elements Across Structural Units in the Introductory Chapters of History Theses’, Functions of Language, 27, no. 2 (2020), pp. 174–206, https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.17037.saw.
Sayers, Jentery, ‘Bringing Trouvé to Light: Speculative Computer Vision and Media History’, in Kevin Kee and Timothy Compeau (eds), Seeing the Past with Computers: Experiments with Augmented Reality and Computer Vision for History, University of Michigan Press, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvnjbdr0.5.
See, Pamela M., ‘The Agency of Papercutting in the Post-Digital Era’, PhD Thesis, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, 2020.
In January 2016 I took up an appointment as ARC DECRA Research Fellow in History in the School of Humanities & Social Inquiry, Faculty of Law, Humanities & the Arts at the University of Wollongong. DECRAs are a three-year fellowship, but being part-time (0.8 FTE), my fellowship stretched to 3.5 years.
My DECRA project is/was a transnational, comparative study titled ‘Chinese seeking citizenship in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, 1860 to 1920’. It’s an exploration of the history of Chinese naturalisation in the British settler colonies, which intertwines biographies and case studies with analysis of naturalisation law and policy. In essence I have been thinking about how, why and in what circumstances Chinese migrants became British subjects in New South Wales, New Zealand and British Columbia, and what it meant for them. I’ve presented on my DECRA research at various conferences and will be working on completing my databases and publishing in the future.
Being a DECRA fellow has also given me the opportunity to continue my earlier work on Chinese Australian women and families, and to embark upon the exciting adventure of running the Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour. Sophie Couchman and I have run the tour on three occasions, with about about fifty guests in total, each time collaborating with Selia Tan Jinhua from Wuyi University.
Now my DECRA has finished, I will continue on at UOW as an Honorary Fellow. I’m very lucky to have had the chance to work with such a fabulous cohort of historian colleagues at UOW – most particularly, Julia Martínez, without whom I would never have imagined that a DECRA could be within my reach.
Listed below is an assortment of things I’ve done during my fellowship and some photos that show the glamorous side of life as a jet-setting transnational historian.
With Selia Tan and Sophie Couchman, Cangdong, Kaiping, China, March 2019
Peer-reviewed publications
2019 Tim Sherratt and Kate Bagnall, ‘The people inside’, in Kevin Kee and Timothy Compeau (eds), Seeing the Past with Computers: Experiments with Augmented Reality and Computer Vision for History, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, DOI: 10.3998/mpub.9964786.
2018 ‘Potter v. Minahan: Chinese Australians, the law and belonging in White Australia’, History Australia, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 458–474, DOI: 10.1080/14490854.2018.1485503.
‘Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: From absence to presence’, Global History Review 全求史評論, vol. 16 (in Chinese).
Sophie Couchman and Kate Bagnall, ‘Memory and meaning in the search for Chinese Australian families’, in Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (eds), Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Special issue in memory of Barry McGowan, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, vol. 8.
Under review
Kate Bagnall and Julia Martínez (eds), Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility Between China and Australia, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong
Kate Bagnall and Julia Martínez, ‘Chinese Australian women, migration and mobility’, in Kate Bagnall and Julia Martínez (eds), Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility Between China and Australia, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong
‘Example or exception? Ham Hop and the Poon Gooey case’, in Kate Bagnall and Julia Martínez (eds), Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility Between China and Australia, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong
Kate Bagnall and Tim Sherratt, ‘Missing links: Data stories from the archive of British settler colonial citizenship’, Journal of World History (submitted to special issue by invitation from Antoinette Burton)
‘Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: From absence to presence’, Journal of Biography and History
In preparation
Kate Bagnall and Peter Prince (eds), Subjects and Aliens:Histories of Nationality in Australia and New Zealand before 1948 (edited collection)
‘Chinese naturalisation in colonial New Zealand and Australia’ (book chapter)
‘Paragraph (m): Chinese wives, migration law and White Australia’ (journal article)
‘Women and the Chinese family in colonial Australia and New Zealand’ (journal article)
2016 ‘Women, history and the shifting patterns of Chinese Australian life’, in John Young, Modernity’s End: Half the Sky, exhibition catalogue, Willoughby City Council, March, pp. 14–19.
Subjects and Aliens Symposium, University of Wollongong, 28 November 2017 (L–R: Emma Bellino, Kate Bagnall, Sophie Couchman, Jane Carey, Kim Rubenstein, Julia Martínez, Angela Wanhalla)
Databases
Three research databases are still in preparation:
Naturalized Chinese in British Columbia to 1914 (data extracted from BC Archives records; with data entry by Karen Schamberger, Sophie Couchman and Tracy Olverson)
Naturalized Chinese in New Zealand to 1908 (data extracted from Archives NZ records)
Naturalized Chinese in colonial New South Wales (data extracted from State Archives NSW records; with research and data entry by Naomi Parry)
With Sophie Couchman in Taicheng, Taishan, China, March 2019
(in preparation) James Minahan’s Homecoming LODBook project (with Tim Sherratt) – a new form of digital publication combining historical narrative and structured data.
With Selia Tan by the Fraser River, British Columbia, July 2016
Keynotes and invited lectures
2019 ‘The Real Face of White Australia: Seeing the People Inside’, Digital Histories Research Seminar, Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology Sydney, 9 May.
2019 ‘Writing women into Chinese Australian history’, Department of History / Gender Studies Programme, University of Hong Kong, 21 March.
2018 ‘Gold Mountain guests: Cantonese settlers across the southern colonies’, public lecture, Global Dunedin Lecture Series, Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, Dunedin, New Zealand, 10 June.
2018 ‘“All the rights and capacities”? Chinese naturalisation and colonial mobility’, keynote lecture, Amidst Empires: Colonialism, China and the Chinese, 1839–1997, Flinders University, Adelaide, 29–30 January.
2017 ‘Australia and China: Before and below the nation’, keynote and public lecture, Looking Back, Moving Forward: Symposium on the Future of Australia-China Relations, China Studies Centre, University of Sydney, 24 October.
2019 ‘From Hong Kong to Sydney: The voyage of the Glamis Castle, 1881’, ‘All Roads Lead to Hong Kong’: Hong Kong History Project Conference, University of Hong Kong, 5–7 June.
*2018 ‘White women and the transnational Chinese family in colonial New South Wales’, 2018 International Symposium on Transnational Migration and Qiaoxiang Studies: International Migration Research from a Gendered Vantage Point, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, China, 8–9 December.
2018 ‘White women, Chinese men: Interracial intimacies in colonial New South Wales’, 2018 International Federation for Research on Women’s History Conference, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, 9–11 August.
2018 ‘Chinese Australian families and the legacies of colonial naturalisation’, Australian Historical Association Conference, Australian National University, 2–6 July.
2017 ‘Chinese restriction, naturalisation and mobility in colonial and post-Federation Australia’, Subjects and Aliens: Histories of Nationality in Australia and New Zealand, University of Wollongong, 28 November.
2017 ‘Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: A case study approach’, International Conference on Chinese Women in World History, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, 11–14 July.
2017 ‘Naturalisation and Chinese restriction in colonial Australasia’, Entangled Histories: Australian Historical Association Conference, University of Newcastle, 3–7 July.
*2017 ‘Naturalised Chinese in colonial Australia’, Beyond the New Gold Mountain: Chinese Community Council of Australia (Victoria) 2017 Conference, RMIT, Melbourne, 24 June.
2016 ‘Naturalised Chinese in British settler societies of the Pacific Rim, 1860 to 1920’, Colonial Formations: Connections and Collisions, University of Wollongong, 23–25 November.
2016 ‘Potter v. Minahan 1908: a legal challenge to White Australia’, 9th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO), Richmond BC, Canada, 6–8 July.
*2016 ‘A culture of suspicion: Chinese at the border of White Australia’, The Commonwealth Department of Immigration—Then and Now, La Trobe University, 19 February.
In Taipei, Taiwan, with Mei-fen Kuo, Julia Martínez and Sophie Loy-Wilson, July 2017
Community talks and outreach
2019 ‘Tracing the origins of Chinese Australian ancestors’, webinar, Society for Australian Genealogists, 15 April.
2018 ‘Researching Chinese Australian families’, Sailing into History: NSW & ACT Association of Family History Societies Annual Conference, Bateman’s Bay, 15–16 September.
2017 ‘Researching early Chinese Australian families’, U3A Wollongong, 23 October.
2017 ‘Researching early Chinese Australian families – 8 sources to know’, Deniliquin Family History Expo, Deniliquin Genealogy Society, Deniliquin, 14 October.
2017 ‘Women and the records of White Australia’, Real Face of White Australia Transcribe-a-Thon, Museum of Australian Democracy, 9 September.
2017 ‘Researching early Chinese Australian families’, Family History Month workshop, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 August.
2016 ‘From Canton to the colonies: Chinese women in nineteenth-century New South Wales’, History Week talk sponsored by Wollongong City Libraries, Corrimal District Library, 7 September.
2016 ‘Researching Chinese Australian family history’, 2-hour seminar, Society of Australian Genealogists, Sydney, 30 April.
2016 ‘Women, history and the shifting patterns of Chinese Australian life’, opening of John Young Zerunge’s Modernity’s End: Half the Sky exhibition, Incinerator Art Space, Willoughby City Council, Willoughby, 2 March.
At the top of Mingshilou, Zili, Kaiping, China, January 2018
Study tour
2017–2019 ‘Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour’
I organised and hosted, with Sophie Couchman, an annual history and heritage study tour to Hong Kong and Guangdong for 15–20 guests; participants included Chinese Australian family historians, writers, heritage practitioners and postgraduate students
Our third tour was held from 6 to 17 March 2019: 2019 brochure (pdf, 1.7mb)
With Guo Feixiang in Yuanxia, Baiyun, Guangzhou, China, June 2019
Teaching and supervision
Higher Degree Research supervision
Emma Bellino, PhD, School of Humanities & Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong – ‘Marriage, women’s nationality, and Australia’s Asian communities in the early twentieth century’ (commenced 2017; UOW PhD scholarship tied to my DECRA fellowship)
With Tim Sherratt at the Deniliquin Family History Expo, October 2017
Grant and publication review
Peer review
University of Sydney Press; Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History; Australian Historical Studies; Journal of Australian Studies; History Australia; New Zealand Journal of History; Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand; Australasian Journal of Irish Studies; Limina
Grant assessment
ARC Discovery Project, 2018; Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund Standard Grant, 2018
Being interviewed by Siobhan Heanue, ABC TV, Museum of Australian Democracy, September 2017
Other professional and outreach activities
Conference and event organisation
2017 Convenor, Subjects and Aliens Symposium, University of Wollongong, 28 November.
2017 Co-organiser with Tim Sherratt, Real Face of White Australia Transcribe-a-Thon, Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra, 9–10 September.
Professional presentations and activities
2019 Presented on ‘Collaboration and communication: Engaging with public audiences’, Early Career Convivium, School of Humanities, University of Hong Kong, 20 March
2017 Co-organised (with Claire Lowrie) and presented at the ‘Invited Workshop on Digital Humanities and ARC Linkage Projects’, University of Wollongong
2017 Participated in the invitation-only ‘Under the Southern Cross’ Chinese Australian history book project workshop, University of Technology Sydney
2017 Social media and blog manager for the UOW Colonial and Settler Studies Network
2016 Presented on my DECRA project at the UOW Research Week ‘History Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers’ event, University of Wollongong
2016 Participated in an invitation-only workshop on the ‘Cantonese Pacific in the Making of the Modern World’, University of British Columbia
2016 Participated in the invitation-only ‘Whisper Workshop 2016’ (linking university researchers with creative and cultural industries), Australian National University
2016 Spoke about my career path from PhD to DECRA at the ACHRC Humanities in the Regions symposium ‘Humanities in the Regions: Building Capacity Through Connectivity and Knowledge’, University of Wollongong
2016 Spoke on my DECRA project at the UOW LHA Early Career Research Presentations with the Vice Chancellor, University of Wollongong
Exhibitions
2017 Co-ordinator and contributor to ‘Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility Between Australia and China’, a historical photographic exhibition on display at the Feminist Research Network Symposium, University of Wollongong,
September
2017 Contributor to ‘Chinese Fortunes’, on display at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (January to July 2017); Immigration Museum Melbourne (August 2017 to March 2018)
Training
Fundamentals of Higher Degree Research Supervision, University of Wollongong, October 2018
Project Management – Introduction, University of Wollongong, May 2016
With actor John Jarratt on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, May 2017
Media
Television
2018 Historical advisor assisting John Jarratt, Who Do You Think You Are?, Series 9, Episode 4, broadcast on SBS TV, 8 May.
2017 Interview with Siobhan Heanue, ABC News Canberra, broadcast on ABC TV evening news and ABC News 24 late news, 3 September.
2018 International Symposium on Transnational Migration and Qiaoxiang Studies: International Migration Research from a Gendered Vantage Point, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, China, 8–9 December 2018
Travel
I drove up and down the highway between Canberra and Wollongong and Sydney a lot, but here’s a list of the more distant places I travelled to:
June 2019: Hong Kong, Guangdong (Zhuhai and Guangzhou), Macau – conference and fieldwork
With Sophie Couchman in Zhaoyangli, Kaiping, China, March 2017 (photo: Jonathan O’Donnell)
Thanks
Finally, some thanks.
To my research assistants: Karen Schamberger, Naomi Parry, Sophie Couchman and Tracy Olverson.
To my co-authors and collaborators: Sophie Couchman, Julia Martínez and Tim Sherratt.
To the staff at: the National Library of Australia and Trove, National Archives of Australia, State Archives NSW, State Library NSW, Archives NZ, Hocken Library, National Library of New Zealand, Digital NZ, NZ Presbyterian Archives, HK Public Record Office, Wuyi Qiaoxiang Culture Research Centre, British Columbia Archives, Vancouver City Archives, City of Victoria Archives, Library Archives Canada, UBC Library, China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, University of Wollongong Library.
To those who have offered me opportunities, shown me kindness, and helped, encouraged and supported me along the way over the past four years, especially when I’ve been far from home:
Tony Ballantyne, James Beattie, Emma Bellino, Dorry Chen Meixian, Chen Ruihuai, Georgine Clarsen, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Matt Fitzpatrick, Shawn Graham, Guo Feixiang, Min Guo, Ben He Zhibin, Carrie Huang Qiaoyi, Di Kelly, Nicki Kemp, Alastair Kerr and Lynn Smith, Tseen Khoo, Vivian Kong, Mei-fen Kuo, Elizabeth LaCouture, Catherine Ladds, Amy Li Dongmei, Sophie Liang Lu, Claire Lowrie, Sophie Loy-Wilson, Jane McCabe, Vera Mackie, Laura Madokoro, Megan Neilson, Amy Nichol, Jonathan O’Donnell, Lachy Paterson, Jayne Persian, Jason Petrulis, David Pomfret, Peter Prince, Kim Rubenstein, Frances Steel, Selia Tan Jinhua, Angela Wanhalla, Howard Wilson, Dawn Wong, Tori Wright, Simon Ville, Henry Yu, Angel Zhao Ruizhu.
This has been the final full year of my DECRA fellowship, and I’ve been focusing on completing some writing projects and getting my international research finished.
Consequently I’ve spent a lot of time away from home this year, with two long international research trips to New Zealand and Canada, as well as trips to China in January for the second Hometown Heritage Tour and in December for a conference at Wuyi University. I’ve also been to Adelaide and Sydney, and up and down the highway between Canberra and Wollongong.
I’m particularly happy that my essays on Charlie Allen’s letters and the Potter v. Minahan High Court case have finally made it to print, and that our co-edited volume on Chinese Australian women’s history is well on it’s way too. I am a slow scholar – in the past because I’ve had to fit my research around other paid work and family responsibilities, but I realise that even now I need time to read and sit with my sources, to write and rewrite and craft my words. I’m very glad to have had the pleasure of co-writing work this year with Tim Sherratt, Sophie Couchman and Julia Martínez, all of which I hope will be out next year.
I have a further six months of my DECRA in 2019 before I move into a different role at the University of Wollongong from July 2019. It’s already looking like a busy time: a third Hometown Heritage Tour and a lecture at Hong Kong University in March; another research trip to Wellington, New Zealand, and a webinar for the Society of Australian Genealogists in April; a Digital Humanities Research Seminar at UTS in May; (hopefully) a conference in Hong Kong in June; and various writing projects to complete along the way.
‘White women and the transnational Chinese family in colonial New South Wales’, Conference Proceeding: 2018 International Symposium on Transnational Migration and Qiaoxiang Studies (International Migration Research from a Gendered Vantage Point), Guangdong Qiaoxiang Culture Research Centre, Wuyi University, December 2018, pp. 66–100.
Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility Between China and Australia (co-edited with Julia Martínez), Hong Kong University Press (reviewers reports received November 2018; forthcoming 2019)
‘The people inside’ (co-written with Tim Sherratt) for Kevin Kee and Timothy Compeau (eds), Seeing the Past with Computers: Experiments with Augmented Reality and Computer Vision for History, University of Michigan Press (forthcoming 2019)
‘Memory and meaning in the search for Chinese Australian families’ (co-written with Sophie Couchman) for Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (eds), Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia, Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming 2019)
‘Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: From absence to presence’ for a special issue of Global History Review 全求史評論 on ‘Women and Gender from a Global Perspective’ edited by Qin Fang
Manuscripts in progress
Writing: Article on ‘uncovering the history of naturalisation using digital methods’ (co-written with Tim Sherratt) for a special issue of the Journal of World History on ‘Digital Methods/Empire Histories’ edited by Antoinette Burton (to be submitted in February 2019)
Writing: Article on ‘the transnational Chinese family in the Tasman colonies (NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand’
Writing: James Minahan’s Homecoming LODBook digital humanities project (with Tim Sherratt)
Editing: Special issue of Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies in memory of Dr Barry McGowan (forthcoming September 2019)
Editing: ‘Subjects and Aliens’ edited volume based on my 2017 symposium at UOW (to be submitted to ANU Press in 2019)
Conferences and public lectures
Presented the keynote at ‘Amidst Empires: Colonialism, China and the Chinese, 1839-1997’, Flinders University, Adelaide, 29–30 January 2017: ‘“All the rights and capacities”? Chinese naturalisation and colonial mobility’
Presented at the Australian Historical Association 2018 at the ANU, Canberra, 2–6 July 2018: ‘Chinese Australian families and the legacies of colonial naturalisation’ (as part of a panel with Emma Bellino and Sophie Couchman)
Presented at the International Federation for Research in Women’s History, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, 9–12 August 2018: ‘White women, Chinese men: Interracial intimacies in colonial New South Wales’
Presented at the 2018 International Symposium on Transnational Migration and Qiaoxiang Studies: International Migration Research from a Gendered Vantage Point, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, China, 8–9 December 2018: ‘White women and the transnational Chinese family in colonial New South Wales’
Presenting at the 2018 International Symposium on Transnational Migration and Qiaoxiang Studies, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, China, 8 December 2018
Research
January: Village fieldwork in Xiangzhou (Zhuhai) and Cuiheng (Zhongshan), Guangdong, China (3 days)
May: Archival research on NZ Chinese naturalisation in Archives New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand (2 weeks)
June: Archival research on NZ Chinese naturalisation in Archives New Zealand, Presbyterian Archives, Hocken Library, Toitū, Dunedin, New Zealand (2 weeks)
August: Archival research on BC Chinese naturalisation in Libraries and Archives Canada, Ottawa (2 weeks) and British Columbia Archives, Victoria (2 days)
December: Fieldwork in Kaiping and Jiangmen, Guangdong, China (3 days)
Managed two research assistants undertaking research for my DECRA project (Dr Naomi Parry and Dr Sophie Couchman)
Presented on ‘Researching Chinese Australian families’ to 120+ delegates at ‘Sailing into History’, NSW & ACT Association of Family History Societies 2018 Annual Conference, 15–16 September 2018
With Selia Tan and the 2018 Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour group in one of the restored houses in Cangdong village, Tangkou, Kaiping, January 2018 (photo credit: Sophie Couchman)
Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand
Supervision and teaching
HDR supervision of Emma Bellino, PhD candidate, UOW
Delivered a guest lecture on ‘Theory & skills – Working with digital archives: The Chinese in Australia’, History Honours HIST470, University of Wollongong, 4 May 2018
Delivered a guest lecture on ‘Developing a research project: Charlie Allen’s transnational childhood’, Hands On History HIST281, University of Wollongong, 17 September 2018
Professional activities and networking
Met with Lin Zhihui, PhD candidate, Department of History, Baptist University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 14 January 2018
Met with Dr Selia Tan, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, 17–19 January 2018, and 10–11 December 2018
Met with Dr Elizabeth La Couture, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 24 January 2018
Attended ANU School of History seminar by Shauna Bostock-Smith, ‘From Colonisation to My Generation: The History of an Aboriginal Family Group over Several Generations’, 28 February 2018
Attended UOW Feminist Research Network seminar by Associate Professor Jane Haggis, ‘Indian Women Touring Europe in the 1930s’, and launch of Dr Sharon Crozier-De Rosa’s book, Shame and the Anti-Feminist Backlash, 19 March 2018
Met with Professor Sydney Shep, Professor Duncan Campbell and Ya-Wen Ho, Chinese Type Project, Victoria University of Wellington, 25 May 2018
Met with Richard Foy, Chief Archivist, Archives New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand, 28 May 2018
Met with Dr Jane McCabe, Dr Lachy Paterson and Associate Professor Angela Wanhalla (Otago University), Associate Professor James Beattie (Victoria University of Wellington), James and Eva Ng (community historians), Dunedin, New Zealand, June 2018
Attended Dr Tim Sherratt’s Digital History Drop-In held in conjunction with the Australian Historical Association Conference at the ANU, Canberra, 2 July 2018
Met with writer Dr Mirandi Riwoe, Canberra, 24 July 2018
Met with Dr Laura Madokoro, McGill University, Ottawa, 15 and 20 August 2018
Met with Associate Professor Shawn Graham, Carleton University, Ottawa, 16 August 2018
Attended funeral of Dr Barry McGowan, historian of Chinese in rural NSW/Victoria and Chinese mining in Australia, 7 September 2018
Attended ‘Fundamentals of Higher Degree Research Supervision’ training by Hugh Kearns, 10 October 2018
Attended a UOW Centre for Colonial and Settler Studies guest lecture by Professor Alison Bashford, ‘World History and the Tasman Sea’, University of Wollongong, 24 October 2018
Met with Associate Professor Henry Yu, University of British Columbia, Jiangmen, China, 10–11 December 2018
Media
With John Jarratt at the National Library of Australia in Who Do You Think You Are? Series 9
Historical advisor assisting John Jarratt, Who Do You Think You Are?, Series 9, Episode 4, broadcast on SBS TV, 8 May 2018
Background interview with Larissa Nicholson (researcher for SBS TV) on women and families in Australia’s early Chinese communities, 18 September 2018
Profiled in 45 Years, 45 Stories, an illustrated commemorative volume published by the Australian Embassy, Beijing, December 2018
Interview with Valerie Khoo for City of Sydney Lunar New Year podcast, 19 December 2018
Citations
Citations to my work are included in the 2018 publications listed below.
Ruth Balint & Zora Simic, ‘Histories of migrants and refugees in Australia’,Australian Historical Studies, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 378–409, 2018, DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1479438
Ashley Barnwell and Joseph Cummins, Reckoning with the Past: Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature, Routledge, 2018
Rebecca Cairns, ‘The Representation of Asia in Victorian Senior Secondary History Curriculum’, PhD thesis, School of Education, Deakin University, 2018
Ellen Broad, Made by Humans: The AI Condition, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne, 2018
Natalie Fong, ‘The significance of the Northern Territory in the formulation of “White Australia” policies, 1880–1901′,Australian Historical Studies, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 527–45, 2018, DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1515963
Rohan Howitt, ‘The Japanese Antarctic Expedition and the idea of White Australia’,Australian Historical Studies, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 510–26, 2018,DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1509881
Erin Ihde, ‘A Chinese-hating American in colonial Australia?: Misconstruing “Monitor Hall”, Journal of Australian Colonial History, vol. 20, July 2018, pp. 123–38
Alanna Kamp, ‘Chinese Australian women’s “homemaking” and contributions to the family economy in White Australia’, Australian Geographer, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 149–65, 2018, DOI: 10.1080/00049182.2017.1327783
Tiger Zhifu Li, ‘Dancing with the Dragon: Australia’s Diplomatic Relations with China (1901–1941)’, M.A. (Res.) thesis, University of Sydney, 2018
Elizabeth Malcolm and Dianne Hall, A New History of the Irish in Australia, New South, Sydney, 2018
Trevor Owens, The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2018
Nadia Rhook, ‘Affective counter networks: Healing, trade, and Indian strategies of in/dependence in early “White Melbourne”‘, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 19, no. 2, 2018
Rachel Stevens & Seamus O’Hanlon, ‘Intimate oral histories: Intercultural romantic relationships in postwar Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 359–77, DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1486444
Mitchell Whitelaw, ‘Mashups and matters of concern: Generative approaches to digital collections’, Open Library of Humanities, vol. 4, no. 1, 2018, DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.291
Michael Williams, Returning Home with Glory: Chinese Villagers around the Pacific, 1849 to 1949, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2018
Michael Woods, ‘Rural cosmopolitanism at the frontier? Chinese farmers and community relations in northern Queensland, c.1890–1920′,Australian Geographer, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 107–131, 2018, DOI: 10.1080/00049182.2017.1327785
published ‘A new perspective on Australia and China’ (review of Australians in Shanghai by Sophie Loy-Wilson), History Australia, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 666–67, https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2017.1384344
submitted manuscript of Locating Chinese Women, edited collection with Julia Martínez, to HKU Press (editor has requested an extended introduction for international readership)
submitted ‘Potter v. Minahan: Chinese Australians and the intimacies of belonging in White Australia’ to History Australia (referees have requested major revisions)
checked final proofs of ‘Writing home from China: Charles Allen’s transnational childhood’, forthcoming (2017) in Paul Arthur (ed.), Migrant Lives: Australian Culture, Society and Identity, Anthem Press
checked copyedits of ‘The people inside’, forthcoming (2018) in Kevin Kee (ed.), Seeing the Past: Augmented Reality and Computer Vision in History, University of Michigan Press
accepted an invitation to contribute a chapter on ‘Searching for Chinese Australian homelands’ to Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (eds), Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage, Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming 2019)
With Selia Tan in the Chinese Camp at Sovereign Hill, June 2017 (it was really cold!)
Conferences presentations
‘Naturalised Chinese in Colonial Australia’, Beyond the New Gold Mountain: CCAV 2017 Conference, RMIT, Melbourne, 24 June 2017
‘Naturalisation and Chinese Restriction in Colonial Australasia’, Australian Historical Association Conference, University of Newcastle, 4–7 July 2017
‘Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: A case study approach’, International Conference on Chinese Women in World History, Institute for Modern History at Academia Sinica, Taipei, 11–14 July 2017
photographic exhibition on Chinese Australian women’s history, Feminist Research Network symposium, UOW, 25 September 2017
‘Australia and China: Before and Below the Nation’, keynote address, ‘Looking Back, Moving Forward: Symposium on the Future of Australia–China Relations’, China Studies Centre, University of Sydney, 24 October 2017
‘Chinese restriction, naturalisation and mobility in colonial and post-Federation Australia’, Subjects and Aliens symposium, UOW, 28 November 2017
‘Women and the records of White Australia’ in the House of Representatives chamber, Old Parliament House, as part of the ‘Real Face of White Australia’ transcribe-a-thon, 9 September 2017
‘Researching early Chinese Australian families’ at the Deniliquin Family History Expo, 13–14 October 2017
‘Early Chinese families in New South Wales’, Wollongong U3A, 23 October 2017
ongoing copyediting and compiling the manuscript of Locating Chinese Women (R)
HSI School meeting on 7 February 2017 (G&S)
CDI meeting on 7 February 2017, and worked on my ‘Performance Enhancement & Career Development Record’ for 2017 (G&S)
prepared and presented 45-minute lecture on ‘Doing History in the Digital Age’ to 95 high-school students for UOW Discovery Days on 10 February 2017 (G&S)
History discipline meeting on 10 February 2017 (G&S)
HDR supervision admin and meetings (R)
feedback on an ARC Discovery project application for UOW History colleagues (R)
attended ‘Under the Southern Cross’ book project workshop at UTS on 18 February 2017 (G&S)
attended welcome lunch for new HDR students at UOW on 22 February 2017 (G&S)
feedback on one article at the CASS WIP reading group on 23 February 2017 (R)
admin tasks (Twitter and website) as Social Media Officer for UOW Colonial & Settler Studies (CASS) Network (G&S)
March
CASS 2017 planning meeting on 3 March 2017 (G&S)
attended CASS HDR welcome event on 3 March 2017 (G&S)
HDR supervision admin, meeting and correspondence (R)
completed my ‘Performance Enhancement & Career Development Record’ for 2017 (G&S)
ongoing copyediting and compiling the manuscript of Locating Chinese Women (R)
met with Claire Lowrie (UOW), Kerry Ross (UOW) and Tim Sherratt (University of Canberra) to organise the ARC Linkage Invited Workshop on Linkage Grants and Digital Humanities, 15 and 16 March 2017 (G&S)
archival research in Hong Kong Public Records Office relating to the 1881 journey of the Glamis Castle, 23 March 2017 (R)
hosted Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour to Hong Kong and Guangdong, 22–31 March 2017 (G&S)
April
post-tour admin and correspondence for the Hometown Heritage Tour (G&S)
provided advice and met with Who Do You Think You Are? researchers and producers about Hamilton/Ah Yott family of Jembaicumbene (G&S)
attended Tim Sherratt’s Digital Humanities Lecture and reception (co-organised by LHA and UOW Library) on 19 April 2017 (G&S)
co-organised, facilitated and spoke at the Invited Workshop on Digital Humanities and ARC Linkage Projects (sponsored by the UOW Centre for Critical Human Rights Research), UOW, 20 April 2017 (R)
ongoing copyediting and compiling the manuscript of Locating Chinese Women (R)
drafting of Introduction to Locating Chinese Women (R)
met twice with Alopi Latekefu and Harold Weldon (Australia–China Council) about commemoration of Australia-China Council 40th anniversary
HDR supervision meeting and correspondence (R)
May
ongoing copyediting and compilation of the manuscript of Locating Chinese Women, including image requests and author revisions (R)
drafting of Introduction to Locating Chinese Women (R)
HDR supervision admin, meeting and correspondence (R)
DECRA budget and finance administration (R)
travel approvals and bookings for research/conference travel in June (Adelaide & Melbourne), July (Newcastle; Taiwan) and August (Byron Bay) (R)
filming for Who Do You Think You Are? episode at National Library of Australia, 21 May 2017 (G&S)
initial organisation for nationality & citizenship research symposium (G&S)
drafting conference paper for Chinese Women in World History conference in July (R)
June
CASS Work-in-Progress Reading Group, who reviewed my paper for Chinese Women in World History conference (R)
DECRA budget and finance administration (R)
finalised manuscript of Locating Chinese Women book and sent to publisher (R)
HDR supervision meetings and correspondence (R)
ongoing organisation for nationality & citizenship research symposium (G&S)
submitted written conference paper for Chinese Women in World History conference in July 2017 (R)
attended talk on ‘The UNESCO World Heritage diaolou towers of southern China and their Australian links’ by Dr Selia Tan from Wuyi University at State Library of New South Wales, 16 June 2017 (R)
research visit to National Archives of Australia in Adelaide, 20 June 2017 (R)
presented a paper, ‘Naturalised Chinese in Colonial Australia’, at the Beyond the New Gold Mountain: CCAV 2017 Conference, RMIT, Melbourne, 24 June 2017 (R)
reviewed an article for the New Zealand Journal of History (R)
July
attended and presented a paper at the Australian Historical Association Conference, University of Newcastle, 4–7 July 2017 – my paper, ‘Naturalisation and Chinese Restriction in Colonial Australasia’, was in a panel on ‘Reluctant entanglement: Resistance to migrations’ with Jayne Persian (USQ) and Melanie Burkett (Macquarie University) (R)
attended and presented a paper at the International Conference on Chinese Women in World History, Institute for Modern History at Academia Sinica, Taipei, 11–14 July 2017 – my paper was titled ‘Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: A case study approach’
wrote and submitted my ‘Potter v. Minahan: Chinese Australians and the intimacies of belonging in White Australia’ article for a forthcoming Colonial Formations special issue of History Australia (R)
met with visiting University of Bristol PhD student, Vivian Kong, who is working with the Hong Kong History Project (R)
HDR supervision meetings and correspondence (R)
DECRA budget and finance administration (R)
August
reviewed the final copyedited version of my ‘Writing home from China’ chapter about Charles Allen (R)
had handover meeting with my research assistant Dr Karen Schamberger following the end of her contract (R)
met with Elaine van Kempen, literary executor for Eric Rolls, regarding his books on Chinese Australian history, Sojourners and Citizens (R)
presented a talk on using primary sources to HIST281 Hands-on History students at the University of Wollongong on 22 August 2017 (G&S)
delivered a one-hour lecture on ‘Doing history in the digital age’ for HIST355 Making History at the University of Wollongong on 29 August 2017 (G&S)
presented a talk on ‘Researching early Chinese Australian families‘ to about 25 people at the State Library of New South Wales on 30 August 2017 as part of Family History Month (G&S)
HDR supervision meetings and correspondence (R)
prepared a strategy document for the UOW Colonial and Settler Studies Network website, blog and Twitter account; refreshed the CASS website design and content; met with the CASS RA to handover website and blog management (G&S)
organisation for the ‘Real Face of White Australia’ transcribe-a-thon to be held at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra, in September (G&S)
organisation for mini-exhibition on Chinese Australian women to be held during the Feminist Research Network symposium at UOW in September 2017 (R)
planning and organisation for second Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour, to be held in January 2018 (G&S)
DECRA budget and finance administration (R)
sick for a week
September
media interview with Siobhan Heanue from ABC News Canberra, broadcast on ABC TV evening news and ABC News 24 late news on 3 September 2017 (G&S)
presented a talk on ‘Women and the records of White Australia’ in the House of Representatives chamber, Old Parliament House, as part of the ‘Real Face of White Australia’ transcribe-a-thon, 9 September 2017 (R)
held a Chinese Australian family history drop-in session with Dr Sophie Couchman at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra, 10 September 2017 (G&S)
photographic exhibition and presentation on Chinese Australian women – Feminist Research Network symposium, 25 September 2017 at UOW (R)
planning and organisation for the Subjects and Aliens symposium (R)
October
on leave for a week for school holidays
HDR supervision meetings and correspondence (R)
DECRA budget and finance administration (R)
attended the Deniliquin Family History Expo and presented a talk on ‘Researching early Chinese Australian families’, 13–14 October 2017
presented a lecture to the Wollongong U3A on ‘Early Chinese families in New South Wales’, 23 October 2017 (G&S)
wrote and presented the keynote address at the Sydney University China Studies Centre symposium, ‘Looking Back, Moving Forward: Symposium on the Future of Australia–China Relations’, 24 October 2017 – my keynote was titled ‘Australia and China: Before and Below the Nation’ and was publicised as part of the Sydney Ideas lecture series (R)
convened Subjects and Aliens, the CASS 2017 symposium, on 28 November 2017 (R)
presented a paper, ‘Chinese restriction, naturalisation and mobility in colonial and post-Federation Australia’, at the Subjects and Aliens symposium, 28 November 2017 (R)
presented a paper at Related Histories: Studying the Family, held at the National Library of Australia, 29 November 2017 – my paper was titled ‘Communication and collaboration in the digital age’ (R)
prepared my contribution to the Australian Government’s 45 Years, 45 Stories website, to celebrate 45 years of Australia–PRC relations, published 24 November 2017 (G&S)
drafted a blog post for Trove highlighting the use of historical newspapers and the NSW Government Gazette (G&S)
December
admin following the Subjects and Aliens symposium (R)
CASS blog admin, including publishing an event review by Emma Bellino (G&S)
research on Chinese naturalisation (Colonial Secretary’s correspondence) at State Records NSW, 5–7 December 2017 (R)
met with my research assistant Dr Naomi Parry, 5 December 2017 (R)
met with Penny Stannard from State Records NSW about Chinese Australian family research, 5 December 2017 (G&S)
met with University of Queensland PhD candidate Natalie Fong to discuss her research on Chinese women in the NT, 14 December 2017 (G&S)
research at NAA Canberra, 14 December 2017 (R)
research at NAA Sydney, 20 December 2017 (R)
two weeks’ holiday before and after Christmas!
As a Level B Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong, I am required to meet ‘Level 2’ for Research and ‘Level 1’ for Governance & Service according to the UOW Academic Performance Framework. I am 0.8FTE, working 28 hours per week (80% Research, 20% Governance & Service).
In January 2016 I took up a 0.8 FTE appointment as ARC DECRA Research Fellow in the School of Humanities & Social Inquiry in the Faculty of Law, Humanities & the Arts at the University of Wollongong. Here’s a look at some of what I’ve been doing this year.
January
DIY Trove list exhibition – I developed a small and experimental online exhibition about the Chinese community in New South Wales before 1940, using a new platform developed by Tim Sherratt.
Public talk at the National Library of Australia – On 24 January I delivered a public lecture to around 80 people at the National Library on Australia’s Chinese communities in the Qing era, and did a Q&A for the library’s blog.
February
Symposium on the Commonwealth Department of Immigration: Then and Now – By invitation I presented a paper, titled ‘A culture of suspicion: Chinese at the border of White Australia’, at this one-day symposium, convened by Gwenda Tavan, at La Trobe University on 19 February. The keynote speaker was Robert Manne, and other participants included Kim Rubenstein, James Jupp, Tim Sherratt and Mary Tomsic.
Travel planning – I spent quite a lot of time this month in planning and organising travel, both for my research trip to Canada in July and August 2016, and for the Hometown Heritage Tour, which is planned for March 2017.
March
Opening of ‘Modernity’s End: Half the Sky’– I was the guest speaker at the opening of this exhibition by accomplished Chinese Australian artist John Young Zerunge, held at the Incinerator Art Space, Willoughby, on 2 March 2016. I also prepared an essay, ‘Women, history and the shifting patterns of Chinese Australian life’, for the exhibition catalogue.
Induction – I attended a one-day academic induction session run by the Professional and Organisational Development Services at University of Wollongong on 1 March 2017.
Writing – I wrote and submitted a draft of my chapter ‘ “To his home at Jembaicumbene”: Women’s cross-cultural encounters on a colonial goldfield’ for a collection titled Migrant Cross-Cultural Encounters in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Jacqueline Leckie, Angela McCarthy and Angela Wanhalla (Ashgate Publishing, forthcoming 2017).
Advice to Australian Dictionary of Biography – Through Carolyn Rasmussen (University of Melbourne & member of the National Editorial Board of the ADB), I provided suggestions of Chinese Australians who might be included in future volumes of the ABD.
April
Writing – I revised and resubmitted my chapter for the Migrant Cross-Cultural Encounters book following comments from the book editors, ordered images from the State Library of NSW and chased up pesky copyright permissions.
Chinese Anzacs consultancy – I undertook a small consultancy with the Chinese Museum in Melbourne to identify any as-yet-unknown Chinese Anzacs from New South Wales. I found four more men to all to their list.
Early Career Research Presentations with the Vice Chancellor – On 18 April I spoke at the UoW Faculty of Law, Humanities & the Arts ‘Early Career Research Presentations with the Vice Chancellor’, outlining my career path to date, my research interests and my new DECRA project. My talk was titled: ‘History, archives and Chinese Australian lives’.
School of Humanities & Social Inquiry Research Week presentation – On 20 April I spoke at the UoW School of Humanities & Social Inquiry ‘History Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers Presentation’ on ‘The naturalisation of Chinese migrants to Australia, Canada and New Zealand from the 1860s to 1920’.
Seminar at Society of Australian Genealogists – I gave a 2-hour research seminar at the Society of Australian Genealogists in Sydney on 30 April 2016. The presentation, titled ‘Researching Chinese Australian family history’, covered: the history of Chinese Australian families, Chinese Australian names and hometowns, and sources to use in researching Chinese Australian family history. The seminar was attended by about 40 people, some who had travelled from as far as Port Macquarie and the Hunter Valley to attend.
May
PhD scholarship – I prepared and advertised for a PhD in Overseas Chinese History attached to my DECRA, and responded to inquiries from potential applicants. The funding for the 3.5-year scholarship is provided by the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at UOW.
Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour – Together with Active Travel (Canberra), I finalised the tour itinerary, prepared the advertising brochure and released the tour for bookings. It was booked out within 24 hours, with further names on a waiting list.
Writing – I spent a lot of May working on my chapter on Ham Hop and the ‘Poon Gooey case’, which is my contribution to the book on Chinese Australian women that Julia Martinez and I are co-editing.
Training and seminars – I attended a number of courses and seminars this month: UOW Induction (UOW); Introduction to Project Management (UOW); launch and discussion of Ann McGrath’s Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia (ANU); Biography Workshop: Paul Pickering on ‘Understanding prosopography’ (ANU).
Networking – At the invitation of Li Tana (ANU) I met with two Chinese historians, FEI Sheng and YUAN Ding from Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, who were on a research visit to Australia looking for sources on early Chinese migrants to Australia.
June
Colonial and Settler Studies Network activities – I attended a public lecture by Professor Ann Curthoys titled ‘Looking for gender? Writing Aboriginal-settler relations into Australian political history’ on 16 June, which resonated with me as a feminist historian now working on a project that is essentially about men. The lecture was followed by the launch of Claire Lowrie’s new book, Masters and Servants, Cultures of Empire in the Tropics (Manchester University Press, 2016).
Work-in-progress reading group – The chapter I am writing on Ham Hop was workshopped by our UOW History work-in-progress reading group, with lots of helpful comments on how to strengthen the argument and refine the focus of the chapter.
Writing – I prepared my talk and slides for the ISSCO 2016 conference.
July
I spent July in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where I:
participated in an invitation-only workshop on the ‘Cantonese Pacific in the Making of the Modern World’ at the University of British Columbia
gave a paper at the ISSCO 2016 conference in Richmond
researched at the BC Archives and City of Victoria Archives in Victoria, and at the UBC Library (Chung Collection) and City of Vancouver Archives in Vancouver.
Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour – I met with Dr Selia Tan to discuss plans for the Jiangmen, Kaiping and Taishan components of the Hometown Heritage Tour.
Who Do You Think You Are? – I provided information about Chinese on the Australian goldfields (in particular on Chinese and the law) to Rosalind Hill, a researcher with Wall to Wall who are producing the next UK series of Who Do You Think You Are?
ABC International interview – On 11 August I did an interview with ABC International journalist Jason Fang about Charles Lee, Australia’s first Chinese Australian diplomat, to coincide with the opening of the Chungking Legation exhibition on at the Chinese Museum.
Seminar on content-based image retrieval – On 19 August I attended a seminar by Associate Professor Lei Wang from UOW on ‘Content-based image retrieval’, discussing a prototype archival photograph retrieval system he has developed using digitised photographs in the National Archives of Australia collection.
Whisper Workshop 2016 – On 29 August I participated in the Whisper Workshop 2016, organised by Jonathan O’Donnell (@researchwhisperer) and Inger Mewburn (@thesiswhisperer), and held at the ANU. This invitation-only workshop brought together 25 key people interested in linking universities and creative and cultural industries.
Writing – I reviewed page proofs and answered indexing queries for my book chapter ‘To his home at Jembaicumbene’ for the Migrant Cross-Cultural Encounters book.
Naturalisation database – I started the process to employ Dr Karen Schamberger as my research assistant to help with data entry for my naturalisation database and other research tasks.
September
Teaching – I gave a talk about an interesting historical source to Jane Carey’s HIST274 Hands On History class on 7 September. I also did supervision with my MPhil student.
History Week talk – On 7 September I gave a public talk at Corrimal Library as part of NSW History Week. The talk, titled ‘From Canton to the colonies: Chinese women in 19th century New South Wales’, was attended by about 65 people and very well received with a great Q&A session and discussion afterwards.
Research – I visited the National Archives in Canberra and started photographing all the certificates in NAA: A806 (‘cancelled’ NSW certificates of naturalisation).
ACHRC Humanities in the Regions – By invitation I spoke at the Australian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres (ACHRC) ‘Humanities in the Regions: Building Capacity Through Connectivity and Knowledge’, held at UOW on 28–29 September. I spoke about my career path from PhD to DECRA and about writing the ROPE (Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence) section of my DECRA application.
Chinese women book proposal – Julia Martinez and I prepared and sent off a proposal for Hong Kong University Press for our co-edited book on Chinese women, which is now tentatively titled Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility Between Australia and China. The proposal was well received and we are working to submit the manuscript by Christmas.
Networking – On 21 September I met with Kim Rubenstein (Professor of Law at ANU) and her recently graduated PhD student Peter Prince to discuss our common interest in the history of Australian citizenship law and Chinese migration.
Seminar – On 21 September I attended the Herbert and Valmae Freilich Foundation’s Annual Lecture in Bigotry and Tolerance 2016 at the ANU. The topic was ‘How do we define racism in modern Australia?’ and speakers included Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane and academics from the ANU.
October
Teaching – On 6 October I gave a lecture to Claire Lowrie’s HIST355 Making History class on ‘historical research in the digital age’. I did supervision with my MPhil student and completed his annual progress review (APR). I met with a potential MPhil student to discuss the possibility of her studying with us at UOW from 2017.
Research – I visited the National Archives in Canberra and finished photographing all the certificates in NAA: A806 (‘cancelled’ NSW certificates of naturalisation).
Naturalisation database – I have set up a naturalisation database in Airtable, and in October my RA, Dr Karen Schamberger, began work on data entry from the records I copied in the BC Archives in July. Initially she is checking the data I have entered, attaching digital copies of documents to the entries, and noting any Chinese names she comes across.
My blog – I worked with a New England local historian, Gill Oxley, to prepare a guest blog post on Emma Tear Tack and her husband Rev. Joseph Tear Tack.
Chinese women book – I did further admin work to progress the manuscript, emailing authors with further comments and information re preparation of their chapters.
ANU Biography Workshop talk – On 27 October I attended a talk by Dr Su Tiping of Xi’an University, who has been a fellow at the National Centre for Biography at the ANU in 2016. Dr Su’s talk was about Chinese Australians in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. I am following up with Professor Melanie Nolan about further suggestions for Chinese Australians, particularly women, who could be nominated for inclusion in the ADB.
Probation review – I completed the paperwork for my Fixed-Term Academic Probation, a requirement of my appointment at UOW, which included compiling information about the work I had done this year towards Research (Level 2) and Governance & Service (Level 1).
Image permissions for Charlie Allen chapter – I organised image permissions for photographs that will accomany my forthcoming (2017) chapter on the life of Charlie Allen, microhistory and Chinese Australian biography.
November
Chinese Fortunes exhibition – I provided historical advice and wrote exhibition text on Chinese Australian families for the Chinese Fortunes exhibition being prepared by the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka. The bilingual exhibition will be on display at MADE from February to June 2017, and later in the year at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne.
Chinese Australian women in the ABD – At the invitation of the head of the National Centre for Biography (ANU), Professor Melanie Nolan, I compiled a list of Chinese Australian women who could be included in future volumes of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. At present, the ADB has entries on only 30 Australians with Chinese heritage, and none of these are women.
Colonial Formations conference – I attended and presented at the Colonial Formations conference at UOW from 23–25 November. My paper discussed my research into Chinese naturalisation and was in a sesssion I organised on ‘coloured’ British subjects in Australia and the empire. My fellow presenters were Professor Margaret Allen (Adelaide University) and Associate Professor Julia Martinez (UOW). I scheduled live tweets of my paper, which I compiled into a blog post.
Chinese women book – I completed a final draft of my chapter on Ham Hop and the Poon Gooey case, and gave Julia Martinez feedback on her chapter.
Probation review – I fullfilled the requirements of my Fixed-Term Academic Probation, meaning that UOW will employ me for the remainder of my contract!
December
Writing – I’ve been working on an article about the entry of Chinese wives in early 20th-century Australia, provisionally titled: ‘Paragraph (m): Chinese wives, immigration law and White Australia’. I’m planning to submit it to the Open Libraries of the Humanities journal.
Research – I spent a day at the National Archives of Australia in Chester Hill, Sydney, to follow up on research for my Chinese wives article.
Publication – Migrant Cross-Cultural Encounters in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Jacqueline Leckie, Angela McCarthy, Angela Wanhalla, was published by Routledge. It includes my chapter: ‘”To his home at Jembaicumbene”: Women’s Cross-Cultural Encounters on a Colonial Goldfield’.
PhD scholarship – I recruited a great student to take up the UOW-funded PhD scholarship attached to my DECRA. She will commence in Autumn 2017, researching ‘marriage, women’s nationality and Australia’s Asian communities in the early 20th century’.
