Dr Peta Stephenson

Centre Postdoctoral Fellow

Rm 205, 137 Barry St.
T: 83443738
E: p.stephenson@unimelb.edu.au

Peta Stephenson joined the Australian Centre in 2000 as a PhD candidate and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 2003. Her thesis examined cross-cultural partnerships between Indigenous and Asian-Australians, exploring how these unions have been imagined in the white Australian collective psyche. Peta regularly contributes to the Centre's various international programs by giving guest lectures on issues and debates including multiculturalism, gender relations and Indigenous identities. She has also worked as a senior tutor and co-convenor of the undergraduate subject Australia Now.

Peta specialises in the study of cross-cultural alliances between non-white migrant and Indigenous peoples. In particular, her research focuses on contemporary cultural production within hybrid communities. By examining the recent artistic, literary, theatrical and other cultural production written and performed by Indigenous and non-white diasporic peoples, her work showcases very vibrant and active hybrid communities that tell hitherto neglected stories. Her research also significantly enriches our understanding of how the nation-state constructs itself and suggests forms of coexistence that radically redefine how we imagine Australia.

In 2004 Peta was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre, where she is currently working on two projects. The first is to translate her PhD thesis into a manuscript for publication. Her proposed book will discuss the varying ways in which Indigenous/Asian histories and identities are being creatively explored in cross-cultural artistic and theatrical production.

Her second project explores why an increasing number of Indigenous Australians are identifying with Islam. Peta's research will forge new ways of understanding the long but largely unknown history of Islamisication in Indigenous communities, a history that questions the validity of dominant nationalist constructions and necessitates alternative notions of belonging, space and place.

Peta's research results have been widely published in a number of chapters in edited collections including “Teaching 'Whiteness'”, in Thinking Australian Studies: Teaching Across Cultures and “Cross-Cultural Alliances: Exploring Aboriginal/Asian Literary and Cultural Production”, in Lost in the Whitewash: Aboriginal-Chinese Encounters from Federation to Reconciliation. Among her forthcoming articles are “Aboriginal Muslims: The Practice and Politics of Hybrid Identities in a Globalising World”, in Anja Schwarz and Russell West-Pavlov (eds) Who's [sic] Australia?: Essays on Contemporary Australian Culture and Society; “Altered States: Indigenous Australian and Chinese Diasporic Alliances” in Mette Thunoe (ed) The Globalization of Chinese Mobility and Culture; “Beyond Colonial Casualties: Chinese Agency in the Australian (Post)Colonial Endeavour”, in Charles Ferrall and Paul Millar (eds.), The Antipodean Imagination of China and “'Where are you from'?: New Imaginings of Identity in Chinese-Australian Writing”, in Kam Louie and Tseen Khoo (eds.), Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Writing in English. Peta's work has also been published in a number of journals including Politics and Culture; Journal of Australian Studies; Hecate and Australian Aboriginal Studies.