Biography
I am an anthropologist whose work also has an interdisciplinary focus, engaging cognate areas of politics, geography, development studies, history, and postcolonial studies. My current research coheres around two key areas of interest and activity. The first of these engages themes of conflict, memory, landscape and development in relation to the legacies of the Second World War in Papua New Guinea, including the growth of war tourism in the region surrounding the Kokoda Track. The second focuses on labour in the Australian horticultural industry, with a geographical focus on the Shepparton region in northern Victoria. Discourses and practices relating to horticultural labour are strongly inflected with considerations of race and class, and have complex histories that are also bound up with Australia’s colonial history. Pacific Islanders and East Timorese are amongst those who travel to the area to work as fruit pickers, and their experiences intersect with the labour experiences of Indigenous communities, as well as migrants and refugees from Asia and the Middle East, European backpackers, and an increasingly marginalized White local underclass. Connecting these two strands of research activity is a focus on the Australia-Pacific region, a concern with contemporary postcolonialism and the reverberations of the past in the present, and an empirical and theoretical attention to land and landscape.
My most recent book, Labour Lines and Colonial Power: Indigenous and Pacific Islander Labour Mobility in Australia (ANU Press, 2019, co-edited with Jon Altman), brings together an innovative collaboration of geographers, historians, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars in order to re-evaluate labour mobility practices in both historical and contemporary contexts. My 2017 monograph, Becoming Landowners: Entanglements of Custom and Modernity in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste (University of Hawaii Press) examines the relationship of customary and modern forms of connection to land in contemporary Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, elaborating the concept of ‘entanglement’ as a means of theorizing this shifting social, cultural and political landscape.
At Deakin, I am Chair of the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (DUHREC), and Co-Convenor of the People, Place and Heritage Research Stream in the Alfred Deakin Institute.
I am available to supervise Higher Degree by Research students across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and Pacific studies.
Read more on Victoria's profileResearch interests
Agricultural labour relations
Colonialism and (post)colonialism
Human-environment relations, landscape and place-making
Migration and mobility
Socio-cultural anthropology
Pacific studies
Ethnographic methodology
Affiliations
Fellow, Australian Anthropological Society
Member, Australian Association for Pacific Studies
Member, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania
Knowledge areas
Pacific Island studies
Migration and mobility
Labour
Land, landscape and place-making
Colonialism and (post)colonialism
The anthropology of state and nation-building
The anthropology of development
Ethnographic methodology
Conferences
SELECTED RECENT CONFERENCE PAPERS
2021. ‘Documentation as Relation’, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, online, 4-7 February.
2020. ‘“This Was the Place”: Uneven Geographies of Affect and (Post)colonial Territorialization Along the Kokoda Trail’, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, Hilo, Hawai’i, 22-25 January.
2019. ‘“The New Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels”: Recognition, Redistribution, and Reckonings with Coloniality in Papua New Guinea’s War Tourism Industry’, Australian Anthropological Society, Australian National University, 2-5 December.
2019. ‘Colonial Returns’, American Anthropological Association, Vancouver, 20-24 November.
2019. ‘Place, affect and the (post)colonial: Affective economies and colonial power in Papua New Guinea’s war tourism industry’, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, Auckland University, 13-16 February.
2018. ‘Will Big Data Feed the World? Neo-colonial Futures and Capitalist Reconfigurations in Global Food Systems’ (with David Boarder Giles), Society for Social Studies of Science, University of Sydney, 1 September.
2018. ‘Money trees and Pasifika place-making in the Shepparton fruit bowl’, Australian Association for Pacific Studies, University of Adelaide, 4-8 April.
2018. ‘Women’s Wartime Memories and Gendered Relations of Remembrance in Oro, PNG’, Australian Association for Pacific Studies, University of Adelaide, 4-8 April.
2017. ‘Horticultural labour and precarious belonging: Complexes of race and mobility in the Greater Shepparton food bowl’, Australia Anthropological Society, University of Adelaide, 11-15 December.
2017. ‘In defence of customary land: Land activism, custom, and emerging discourses of indigeneity in Melanesia’, Association of Social Anthropologists of Oceania, Hawai’i, 8-11 February.
2016. ‘Seasonal Labour, Assessments Of Value, And Social Relations In Precarious Times’, Australian Anthropological Society conference, Sydney University, 12-15 December.
SELECTED RECENT SEMINARS
2021. ‘Putting the crisis to work: (Re)valuing seasonal farm labour amid the COVID-19 pandemic’, Global Food Supply Chains in a World on the Edge, Academy for the Social Sciences in Australia workshop, 15-16 June.
2020. ’Women’s practices of care and survival in wartime PNG’, Health and Labour after the Pacific War: Pacific Islanders, Medical Infrastructure and Decolonization workshop, Flinders University, 20-21 February.
2019. ‘Labour, mobility, and the making of futures and places in an Australian horticultural region’, EASA AnthroMob workshop, Mobility and the Future of Work, Universitat de Barcelona, 6-8 November.
2019. ‘Who feeds (on) whom? Labour and the porosity of environments and (classed and racialized) bodies’, Metabolism(s) Roundtable, Deakin University, 15 August.
2019. ‘Postcolonial relationships and the politics of recognition along the Kokoda Track’, PNG National Museum and Art Gallery seminar series, Port Moresby, 21 March.
2018. ‘“Local’s don’t want to do that work anymore”: Race, Nostalgia, and Belonging in an Australian fruit-growing region’, Forum on Migrant Workers in Agriculture, University of Sydney, 15 November.
2018. ‘Postcolonial reckonings and the politics of recognition along the Kokoda Track, Papua New Guinea’, SSPS Seminar Series, University of Melbourne, 21 September.
2018. ‘Mobility under constraint: Race and Precarity in the Pacific Islander Seasonal Worker Program’, Sydney Pacific Studies Seminar Series, University of Sydney, 6 June.
Professional activities
Chair, Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (DUHREC)
Co-Convenor, People, Place and Heritage Research Stream, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University
Editor, Postcolonial Studies
Co-convenor, Alfred Deakin Institute Flagship Conference, November 2021
Co-convenor, Australian Association for Pacific Studies conference, April 2021
Media appearances
SELECTED AUTHORED COMMENTARY
2020. ‘Australia’s Food Supply Relies on Migrant Workers Who Are Facing Coronavirus Limbo’. The Guardian, 24 March.
2019. ‘Picking Fruit is Work, Not Benevolence, and it Doesn’t Absolve Australia of Climate Responsibility’. The Guardian, 18 August. (Also published in the globally-distributed Guardian Weekly)
2017. ‘PNG Women’s Wartime Memories Cast New Light on Kokoda and the Pacific War’. The Conversation, 3 November.
2015. ‘Remembering Australia’s Wars: Hangings of Papua New Guineans by Australian Soldiers in WWII Complicate Our National Narratives’ (co-authored with Kirstie Close-Barry). Australian Policy and History.
2014. ‘“PNG Solution” turns to nightmare on Manus Island’. The Age, 20 Feb.
2013. ‘Rudd’s hard-line approach will be disastrous’. The Age, 22 July.
RECENT INTERVIEWS AND PODCASTS
2021. 'Beyond Kokoda', part of the Welcome? podcast series.
2020. ‘Borders, im/mobilities, and pandemic nations’, part four of the Thinking and Organising Beyond the Pandemic: A Relational Poverty Toolkit webinar series.
2018. ‘Episode #11: Monica Minnegal and Victoria Stead’, Conversations in Anthropology@Deakin podcast, 14 May.
2016. Interview on ABC 774 Evenings Program, with Jonathan Ritchie, on the PNG Oral History Project, 25 April.
2013. Interview on The 7pm Project, Channel Ten, the ‘PNG Solution’ asylum seeker policy, 22 July.
RECENT MEDIA MENTIONS
2020. ‘Vital Migrant Workers at Risk’, Geelong Advertiser, 24 April.
2020. ‘Feeding a COVID-19 Nation: Protecting All Workers’ Rights in a Time of Crisis’, disruptr, 24 April.
2019. ‘Oro Women Tell War Stories’, Post-Courier, 22 March (Papua New Guinea).
2018. ‘PNG Hears its War History’, Geelong Advertiser, 27 April.
2018. ‘Papua New Guineans to Hear Their Own Stories of WW2’, Invenio, 26 April.
2018. ‘Memorialising Tragedy in Papua New Guinea’, Invenio, 23 March.
2017. ‘Time to Rethink “Development” in Melanesia’. Deakin Research News, 17 August.
Awards
2017. Awarded the Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Early Career Researcher Award
Projects
‘Global Food Supply Chains in a World on the Edge’, Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) Workshop Grant, 2020-2021, AU$9,000.
‘Labour, Race and Belonging: Strengthening Rural Workforces and Communities’, Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council, 2018-2012, AU$351,996
‘Beyond Recognition: Postcolonial Relationality Across Difference’, Discovery Indigenous, Australian Research Council, 2018-21, AU$497,807
‘Mobile Labour and the Meaning of Land: The Australian Farm as a Site of Encounter’, Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Deakin University, 2016-18, AU$200,000
‘Labour Migration, Transnational Farm Ownership, and the Transformation of Global Agriculture: Identifying Pathways to Intercultural Connection and Shared Belonging in Changing Rural Spaces’, Toyota Foundation Research Grants Program, 2016-17, AU$8,300
‘Women Remember the War: Investigating Papua New Guinean Women’s Experiences of the Second World War’, part of the PNG Oral History Project, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) through the PNG Strongim Pipol, Strongim Nesen program, 2015-18, AU$120,000
‘War Memories: Papua New Guineans, Australians, and the Taim Pait’, Central Research Grants Scheme, Deakin University, 2015, AU$15,000
Publications
Race and place-making in the rural Global North
V Stead, R Butler, C Mayes
(2023), Vol. 97, pp. 1-8, Journal of Rural Studies, C1
V Stead
(2023), American Ethnologist, C1
Victoria Stead, Kirstie Petrou
(2022), pp. 39-53, Beyond Global Food Supply Chains, Singapore, B1
D Giles, V Stead
(2022), Vol. 46, pp. 37-53, Dialectical Anthropology, C1
V Stead, L Taula, M Silaga
(2022), Vol. 94, pp. 454-461, Journal of Rural Studies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, C1
Victoria Stead, Kirstie Petrou
(2022), pp. 1-19, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, London, Eng., C1
Victoria Stead
(2022), pp. 1-11, Journal of Agrarian Change, London, Eng., C1
Victoria Stead
(2021), Vol. 27, pp. 303-320, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Chichester, Eng., C1
Unfree Labour and Australia's Obscured Pacific Histories: Towards a New Genealogy of Modern Slavery
V Stead, L Davies
(2021), Vol. 45, pp. 400-416, Journal of Australian Studies, London, Eng., C1
Victoria Stead
(2021), Vol. 23, pp. 71-94, Health and History, Sydney, N.S.W., C1
Labour lines and colonial power
Victoria Stead, Jon Altman
(2019), pp. 1-26, Labour lines and colonial power : Indigenous and Pacific Islander labour mobility in Australia, Canberra, A.C.T., B1
Money trees, development dreams and colonial legacies in contemporary Pasifika horticultural labour
Victoria Stead
(2019), pp. 133-157, Labour lines and colonial power : Indigenous and Pacific Islander labour mobility in Australia, Canberra, A.C.T., B1
V Stead
(2018), Vol. 28, pp. 16-31, Anthropological forum, London, Eng., C1
Moral horizons of land and place
V Stead, M Dominy
(2018), Vol. 28, pp. 1-15, Anthropological forum, London, Eng., C1
V Stead, M Embahe, M Tongia
(2018), A7
Victoria Stead
(2017), Honolulu, Haw., A1
V Stead
(2017), pp. 357-381, Kastom, property and ideology: land transformations in Melanesia, Acton, A.C.T., B1
Doing 'social cohesion': cultural policy and practice in outer metropolitan Melbourne
V Stead
(2017), Vol. 37, pp. 405-424, Critical social policy, London, Eng., C1
Violent histories and the ambivalences of recognition in postcolonial Papua New Guinea
V Stead
(2017), Vol. 20, pp. 68-85, Postcolonial studies, London, Eng., C1
Recognition, power and coloniality
S Balaton-Chrimes, V Stead
(2017), Vol. 20, pp. 1-17, Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, Vic., C1
V Stead
(2016), Vol. 27, pp. 30-48, Australian journal of anthropology, London, Eng., C1
Homeland, territory, property: contesting land, state, and nation in urban Timor-Leste
V Stead
(2015), Vol. 45, pp. 79-89, Political geography, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, C1-1
The price of fish: problematising discourses of prosperity at the Pacific marine industrial zone
V Stead
(2014), pp. 197-230, Securing a prosperous future: Papua New Guinea. Papers from the second annual Alfred Deakin Research Institute Papua New Guinea Symposium, 2012, Goolwa, Adelaide, B1-1
Sustainable communities, sustainable development: Other paths for Papua New Guinea
P James, Y Nadarajah, K Haive, V Stead
(2012), Honolulu, Hawai`i, A1-1
Greeting the state: entanglements of custom and modernity on Papua New Guinea's Rai Coast
V Stead
(2012), Vol. 23, pp. 16-35, Anthropological forum, Abingdon, Eng., C1-1
V Stead
(2012), Vol. 23, pp. 229-247, Australian journal of anthropology, Melbourne, Vic., C1-1
V Stead, J Oliver
(2010), Melbourne, Vic., A6-1
Urban and peri-urban communities
P James, V Stead, Y Nadarajah, K Haive
(2009), Vol. 5, pp. 17-62, Local-Global Journal, Melbourne, Vic., C1-1
P James, V Stead, Y Nadarajah, K Haive
(2009), Vol. 5, pp. 64-114, Local-Global Journal, Melbourne, Vic., C1-1
P James, V Stead, Y Nadarajah, K Haive
(2009), Vol. 5, pp. 116-154, Local-Global Journal, Melbourne, Vic., C1-1
V Stead
(2008), Melbourne, Vic., A6-1
Funded Projects at Deakin
Australian Competitive Grants
Beyond Recognition: Postcolonial Relationality Across Difference
Prof Yin Paradies, Dr Victoria Stead, Dr Sam Balaton-Chrimes
ARC Discovery Indigenous
- 2021: $126,517
- 2020: $140,565
- 2019: $136,064
- 2018: $124,013
Labour, Race and Belonging: Strengthening Rural Workforces and Communities
Dr Victoria Stead
ARC DECRA - Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
- 2020: $126,105
- 2019: $122,295
- 2018: $148,614
Other Public Sector Funding
PNG Oral History Project
Dr Jonathan Ritchie, Dr Ceridwen Spark, Dr Victoria Stead
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade DFAT
- 2018: $105,724
- 2017: $566,591
- 2016: $67,492
- 2015: $186,686
Industry and Other Funding
Intergenerational Relations in New Arrival Communities in Victoria
Prof Fethi Mansouri, A/Prof Danny Ben-Moshe, Dr Victoria Stead
Ethnic Communities' Council of Victoria
- 2014: $10,000
Evaluation of the Social Cohesion, Young People and Multiculturalism project
Prof Fethi Mansouri, A/Prof Danny Ben-Moshe, Dr Victoria Stead
Centre for Multicultural Youth
- 2014: $15,000
- 2013: $15,000
Labour Migration, Transnational Farm Ownership, and the Transformation of Global Agriculture: Identifying Pathways to Intercultural Connection and Shared Belonging in Changing Rural Spaces
Dr Victoria Stead
TTF Grant - Research - The Toyota Foundation
- 2017: $2,276
- 2016: $5,908
Other Funding Sources
Feeding the Crisis: Global Food Supply Chains in a World on the Edge
Dr Victoria Stead, A/Prof Melinda Hinkson, Prof Jon Altman
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia ASSA Workshop Program grants
- 2021: $9,000
Supervisions
Bronwyn Shepherd
Thesis entitled: Making a mission space: Milingimbi Methodist Mission, 1923-1943
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences