CAPSTRANS research fellow

Dr Christine de Matos

Research Fellow, CAPSTRANS

Qualifications

BA(Hons) (University of Western Sydney)
Dip Ed (University of Sydney)
PhD (History) (University of Western Sydney)

Research Programs

Australia in the Asia-Pacific

Research Specialisation

I specialise in historical research concerning Australian involvement in the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952). I am currently interested in the diverse cross-cultural interactions between Australians in the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces and the Japanese in terms of gender, race and class, and in documenting the experiences of those missing from current Occupation historiography, including women, Indigenous soldiers and politically radical soldiers. I also wish to incorporate a Japanese perspective into Australian historiography of the Occupation. I have also researched and published on Australian involvement in the Occupation at the level of government and diplomacy.

Languages

English
Japanese

Current Research Projects

• Hidden Histories of Occupation: Australians in Hiroshima, 1945-1952

Recent Publications

• (in press) Imposing Peace and Prosperity: Australia, Social Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
• (2006) ‘The Occupiers and the Occupied: A nexus of memories’. Invited paper for inaugural issue of New Voices: Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Australia-Japan Relationship, Vol 1, Sydney: The Japan Foundation: 1-12.
• (2006) ‘The Case of Nikko jiken: Occupation, reform, power and conflict’ in Adrian Vickers and Margaret Hanlon (eds), Asia Reconstructed: Proceedings of the 16th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, 2006, Wollongong, Australia, Canberra: Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) Inc. & Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS), The Australian National University. Available online: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2006/proceedings.html
  
• (2006) ‘Diplomacy Interrupted?: Macmahon Ball, Evatt and Labor's Policies in Occupied Japan', Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol 52, No 2: 188-201.
• (2006) 'Australian and New Zealand History Web Sites' in D.A Trinkle & S.A. Merriman (eds), The 21 st Century History Highway: A Guide to Internet Resources 4th Edition, New York: M.E. Sharpe.
• (2005) ‘ The Allied Occupation of Japan – an Australian View', Japan Focus, 27 July, available online: http://www.japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=344.
• (2005) ‘From the “People's War” to the “People's Occupation”: Australian and Japanese Communists, 1945-52' in Greg Patmore, John Shields and Nikola Balnave (eds), The Past is Before Us: Proceedings of the Ninth National Labour History Conference, The University of Sydney, 30 June-2 July 2005, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History with the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, pp. 107-113.
• (2005) ‘Hidden Histories of Occupation in Hiroshima', Omusubi: Newsletter of the Japan Foundation (Sydney), No 3, Autumn, p. 4.
• (2004) ‘Contesting the “Will of the People”: Australia and Constitutional Reform in Occupied Japan', Japanese Studies, Vol 24, No 2, September, pp. 181-200.
• (2004) ‘“For Good or for Evil”: Australia, Labor Reform and the Military Occupation of Japan' in Peer-reviewed Proceedings of the 15th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, 2004, Canberra, Australia, available online: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ASAA/conference/proceedings/asaa-2004-proceedings.html.
• (2002) 'The Search for Peace and Prosperity: Idealism and Pragmatism in Australian Policies towards the Japanese Labour Movement, 1945-49' in Melbourne Historical Journal, Proceedings of the Mass Historia! Postgraduate Conference, University of Melbourne 2001, pp. 120-126.
• (2001) 'Encouraging “Democracy” in a Cold War Climate: The Dual-Platform Policy Approach of Evatt and Labor toward the Allied Occupation of Japan 1945-1949' in Pacific Economic Papers, No. 313, March: 1-30.
• (2000) Lawson, R & de Matos, C. 'Information Technology Skills in the Workplace: Implications for Bachelor of Arts Degrees' in Australian Journal of Education Technology, Vol. 16, No. 2, Winter, pp. 87-103.
• (1999) '"Un-forgetting" the Allied Occupation of Japan: Oral Histories from Australian Participants' in Tales of the Century: Oral History Association of Australia Journal, No. 21, pp. 32-37.