Dr Victoria Stead

Agricultural labour relations

Colonialism and (post)colonialism

Human-environment relations, landscape and place-making

Migration and mobility

Socio-cultural anthropology

Pacific studies

Ethnographic methodology

Fellow, Australian Anthropological Society

Member, Australian Association for Pacific Studies

Member, Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania

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

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.

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

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. 

2017. Awarded the Faculty of Arts and Education Faculty Early Career Researcher Award

‘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