Associate ProfessorVictoria Stead

I am an anthropologist whose work engages themes of labour, race, place-making, and postcoloniality in Australia and the Pacific. I draw on my disciplinary grounding in anthropology, in dialogue with cognate fields including history, politics and Pacific studies, to tell richly human stories underpinned by ethnographic fieldwork and archival research.

My research work centres around four key programs of work: first, transformations to relations of labour/power, including intersections of labour, race and place-making; second, understanding Australian postcoloniality in the Pacific region, including particularly in relation to Papua New Guinea; third, building just food systems; and fourth, understanding regional and rural place-making.

I am passionate about building vibrant and inclusive cultures of research and teaching, and about academic work that reaches beyond the University in pursuit of more just and sustainable futures. I am currently the President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies (AAPS). At Deakin, I am Discipline Convenor for Anthropology, and mid-career researcher representative on the School Research Council in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

I am available to supervise Honours and Higher Degree by Research students across anthropology and Pacific studies, and on topics related to labour, race and postcolonial relations, migration, place-making, human-environment relations, and development.