Dr Sara Wills

Biography

Dr Sara Wills is a lecturer in Australian Studies at the Australian Centre in the School of Historical Studies. Born in the UK, she migrated to Australia as a teenager in the 1980s and was educated at the University of Melbourne, where she completed a BA(Hons) and PhD in History. She has since worked in publishing and museums as well as academia and, while maintaining a keen interest in history and memory, now works more broadly in an interdisciplinary Australian Studies context.

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Research

From 2001-2005 Dr Wills was the recipient of an ARC postdoctoral fellowship in conjunction with Melbourne's Immigration Museum. Entitled 'Knowing Their Place? British Migrancy in Postwar and Late Twentieth Century Australia', this project included a large oral history component, a cultural history of the language and iconography of British migrants' senses of place and belonging, an issue-based analysis of policy and media coverage of the British in Australia, and a case study of the Frankston area in Victoria.

Dr Wills's most recent research relates to Australian migrant hospitality, the discursive and spatial formation of migrant memory and histories, and comtemporary questions of migrancy and national identity in Australia. Her current ARC-funded research project is an investigation of the hostel accommodation and services provided to post-war migrants in Australia and is entitled 'Hostels, Hosts and Hospitality'. In addition, Dr Wills is particularly interested in the ways people manage the experience of loss, and in the processes of 're-placing' senses of community, culture and identity.

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Publications

Dr Wills's recent publications reflect her interdisciplinary approach to research. She has published on refugee issues and Australian national memory in New Formations (no. 51, 2004); on immigration and Australian historiography in Australian Historical Studies (no. 118, 2002); on memory and British migration in the Australian Journal of Politics and History (no. 1, 2005); on representations of migrancy and national identity in Australian Historical Studies (no. 124, 2004); on the performance and cultural dynamics of Britishness in Cultural Studies Review (no. 2, 2003); on the challenges of teaching in cross-cultural contexts in Thinking Australian Studies (UQP, 2004); and on other issues relating to migration and multiculturalism.

Emerging from her doctoral research, Dr Wills also maintains an interest in utopian desire and specifically the 'green socialism' of William Morris. She has published articles on these subjects in various journals, and her book The Greening of William Morris was published by Circa in 2006.

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Teaching

Dr Wills teaches the 2nd/3rd-year subject 102-211 Migrant Nation: Culture and Identity, and the 4th/5th-year subjects 102-512 From Cosmopolitanism to Transnationalism and 102-511 Imaging Australian Spaces, all of which reflect her research interests in issues of migration, identity, space/place and cross-cultural studies.

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Supervision

Dr Wills supervises broadly in the field of Australian Studies, but has a particular interest in supervising research on migration, multicultural and refugee issues in post-war Australia. Her students have been or are currently engaged in work on: a case study of Chilean refugees in Melbourne; the development of Australian-Italian identities through novel and film; Aboriginal cultural centres in south-eastern Australia; possible spaces of hospitality among Somalian migrants to Italy and Australia; histories of migrant hostels; Burmese migration and transnationalism in Australia; participatory arts-based research on ideas and expressions of Australianness among refugee and immigrant youth.

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