Staff Profiles

Sue is experienced as a researcher, educator, publisher, editor, administrator, curator of social-history exhibitions and also has skills in book and web design, contributing to the Dutch Australians at a Glance (DAAAG) website.

Sue’s PhD in Anthropology (UWA) is entitled, The Interface of the Personal and the Political: adaptive strategies of former Yugoslavs in the post-Yugoslav war and as refugees in Perth, Western Australia

Prior to her academic career, Sue worked extensively as a professional journalist, producer and interviewer in Australia and the UK.

• Australian cultural, social and military history.
• Migration and the micro-politics of war, with a particular focus on the adaptive strategies of civilians to war, internment, displacement and resettlement.
• Asylum seekers/evacuees to Australia (1945-1946 and 1990-2011)

1. Contributing researcher: Peel Away the Mask: a study of the social condition of the Peel Region, 2nd edition, The John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, 2011.

2. West Australian researcher: 'The irish Brigage': the flight of legendry brigands from South Africa to Australia - University of Pretoria, South Africa (2010 - ongoing).

3. Principal Researcher, Australian Collins Class Submarines - Australia-Asia-Pacific-Institute, Curtin University (2011).

4. Principal Researcher, Australian O-Boats of the Cold War (1963-2000) - Centre for Advanced Studies in Australia, Asia and the Pacific, Curtin University (2011).

5. Principal Researcher, Rehabilitation and Repatriation of WWI Veterans, Australia at War and Peace Research Group (2011-2012).

6. Principal Researcher, Australian Tunnellers of World War I - Australian Folklore Research Unit, Curtin University (2009).

7. Research and analysis towards: ARC Discovery Project: 'Anglos Abroad: Memoirs of Immersion in a Foreign Language and Culture' - Life Writing Research Unit, Australia Research Institute (ARI), (2007 – 2008).

8. Research Associate: Migration, Ethnicity, Refugees and Citizenship (MERC) Research Unit, Australia Research Institute (ARI), Curtin University  (2005 – 2007):

       Contributing researcher:

• Footsteps of the Dutch in Australia (Curtin Fellowship Study)

• Dutch Contact and Resettlement in Western Australia (Lotterywest funded Project)

• The Impact of Immigration and Resettlement on Second Generation Dutch  (Liveable Communities Grant)

• Former child evacuees from the Dutch East Indies to Fairbridge Farm School in 1945-1946 (Fairbridge Society funded project)

        Substantial organisation and implementation of:

• nation-wide study of migrants and evacuees from the former Netherlands East Indies (accessed through Stichting Het Gebaar, The Netherlands)  

• nine-week Australia-wide study of Dutch migration

• Invisible Dutch: Myth, Fact or Fiction!  Social-history exhibition, Fremantle History Museum

       Contributions to:

• National celebrations of Australia on the Map 1606-2006

• ‘Voyage to the Promised Land’ (Social-history exhibition, Northam Multicultural Festival).

9. Earlier research interests:

• Iranian, African, and former Yugoslav migrants and refugees

• Asylum seekers to Australia

• Chinese-American women and family life

Contributing lecturer, tutor, student advisor: Dept of Anthropology, UWA.

Course units from February 1999-2006 inclusive include:

• Migration, Culture and Identity

• Healing, Medicine and Culture

• Health and Illness in Australian Society

• Psychological Anthropology

• Gender and Sexuality

• ‘Sex and Aggression Across the Lifespan’: an interactive course drawing together cultural anthropology, psychology, biology, and evolutionary theory.

• Anthropology and Sociology: human adaptations

• Anthropology and Sociology: socio-cultural change and modernisation