Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson
History
I am a historian of Chinese Australian communities. My first book was a study of China-Australia relations in the interwar years, seen through the prism of Chinese Australian communities in Shanghai. In the book, I highlighted the importance of economic archives for immigration historians; these archives often preserve migrant agency. I combine methodological insights from labour history, overseas Chinese history, and the New History of Capitalism to bring a ‘New Materialist’ approach to Australia’s multi-ethnic and multi-lingual past.
- Chinese Australian history
- Labour History
- Histories of Migration
- The history of Sino-Australian relations
- New History of Capitalism
- Overseas Chinese Diaspora
Teaching
- HSTY1001 History Workshop: La Perouse, 1931
- HSTY2700 What do We Want? Protest in Australia
- HSTY2701 Spies in the Archive
- HSTY 4102 Writing Race and Resistance
Areas of supervision
I specialise in Chinese Australian history, but I am also happy to supervise topics in Australian history more generally, particularly labour history, social history and immigration history.
The Chinese Australian Ghost Economy Project (ARC DECRA 2022-2025)
This project aims to uncover the social and cultural significance of Chinese economic activity in Australia. Court archives will be used to investigate Chinese agricultural and remittance economies, re-centering Chinese Australians in the nation's history. I propose that behind the surveillance archive of White Australia was a partially hidden world of Chinese Australian social, political and economic activity, a ‘ghost’ or ‘shadow’ economy, which operated at a necessary remove from the state. Chinese migrants built their own economic institutions in Australia; share farming allowed for labour mobility, intricate banking and remittance systems based upon kinship obligations and debt bondage helped create vast and reliable distribution network. Legal historians have long been convinced that state power over, for example, immigration policy, mattered to economic change. In this project I will collaborate with legal and economic historians to address a key question: how did Chinese migrant communities survive economically and socially in white Australia?
South Flows the Pearl: Chinese Australian Voices
Since 2019 I have been collaborating with the family of Chinese Australian historian Mavis Gock Yen to publish and preserve the oral histories she collected with her community in the 1980s and 1990s but never published. Working with the Chinese Australian Historical Society and Sydney University Press, we published Mavis’s ground breaking work in 2022 as South Flows the Pearl: Chinese Australian Voices (Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 2022).
My article 'Rural Geographies and Chinese Empires: Chinese Shopkeepers and Shop-life in Australia'. Australian Historical Studies, 45(3), 407-424 was shortlisted for the Australian Historical Association’s Patricia Grimshaw Prize in 2016
Selected publications
(Routledge, 2017)
(Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 2017)
Publications
Books
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2019). Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China [Chinese translation by Su Diping (2019)]. China: Qingdao Publishing House.
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2017). Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China. Abingdon: Routledge. [More Information]
Edited Books
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2017). Labour history and the "coolie question". Haymarket NSW Australia: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
Book Chapters
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2025). The Body in the Mud: John Young's History Project and Truth-telling in Chinese Australian History. In O. Krischer (Eds.), John Young: The History Projects, (pp. 300-323). Sydney: Power Publications.
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2024). Epilogue. In Julia Martínez , Claire Lowrie and Gregor Benton (Eds.), Chinese Colonial Entanglements: Commodities and Traders in the Southern Asia Pacific, 1880–1950, (pp. 179-191). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2024). Introduction. In Julie Wrigley and Ian Willis (Eds.), A History of Camden Chinese Market Gardeners 1899-1993, (pp. 13-17). Sydney: Camden Historical Society.
Journals
- Loy-Wilson, S., Vickers, A., Alu, G. (2024). Editorial: Opening Australia's Multilingual Archive. Australian Historical Studies, 55, 621-631.
- Levidis, A., Loy-Wilson, S. (2024). Introduction: ruptured histories – Australia, China, Japan. History Australia, 21(1), 3-15. [More Information]
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2024). Unravelling National Time: Chinese Voices and the Re-ordering of Australian History. Australian Historical Studies, 55, 632-650. [More Information]
Edited Journals
- Loy-Wilson, S., Vickers, A. (2024). Australian Historical Studies. Australian Historical Studies, 55(4).
- Loy-Wilson, S., Levidis, A. (2024). History Australia. History Australia, 21(1). [More Information]
- Gibson, P., Loy-Wilson, S., Piccini, J., Smith, E. (2024). Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History. Labour History, 126(1).
Magazine / Newspaper Articles
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2023). A gothic, brilliant success: The Poison of Polygamy brings the first Chinese-Australian novel to the stage after 113 years. The Conversation. [More Information]
2025
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2025). The Body in the Mud: John Young's History Project and Truth-telling in Chinese Australian History. In O. Krischer (Eds.), John Young: The History Projects, (pp. 300-323). Sydney: Power Publications.
2024
- Loy-Wilson, S., Vickers, A. (2024). Australian Historical Studies. Australian Historical Studies, 55(4).
- Loy-Wilson, S., Vickers, A., Alu, G. (2024). Editorial: Opening Australia's Multilingual Archive. Australian Historical Studies, 55, 621-631.
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2024). Epilogue. In Julia Martínez , Claire Lowrie and Gregor Benton (Eds.), Chinese Colonial Entanglements: Commodities and Traders in the Southern Asia Pacific, 1880–1950, (pp. 179-191). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
2023
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2023). A gothic, brilliant success: The Poison of Polygamy brings the first Chinese-Australian novel to the stage after 113 years. The Conversation. [More Information]
2022
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2022). Introduction. South Flows the Pearl: Chinese Australian Voices, (pp. 1-17). Sydney: Sydney University Press. [More Information]
2021
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2021). Daisy Kwok's Shanghai: Life in China before and after 1949. In K. Bagnall and JT. Martínez (Eds.), Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility between China and Australia, (pp. 230-254). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
- Forsyth, H., Loy-Wilson, S. (2021). Introduction: Political Implications for the New History of Capitalism. Labour History, 121(1), 1-7. [More Information]
- Loy-Wilson, S., Forsyth, H. (2021). Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History. Labour History, 121(1).
2019
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2019). Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China [Chinese translation by Su Diping (2019)]. China: Qingdao Publishing House.
- Pan, C., Clarke, M., Loy-Wilson, S. (2019). Local Agency and Complex Power Shifts in the Era of Belt and Road: Perceptions of Chinese Aid in the South Pacific. Journal of Contemporary China, 28(117), 385-399. [More Information]
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2019). Trouble in White Australia: Marilyn Lake, Australian History and Asian Exclusion. In Joy Damousi and Judith Smart (Eds.), Contesting Australian History: Essays in Honour of Marilyn Lake, (pp. 175-189). Melbourne: Monash University Publishing.
2017
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2017). Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China. Abingdon: Routledge. [More Information]
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2017). Coolie Alibis: Seizing Gold from Chinese Miners in New South Wales. International Labor and Working-Class History, 91, 28-45. [More Information]
- Kirkby, D., Loy-Wilson, S. (2017). Introduction. Labour History, (113), iii-v. [More Information]
2016
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2016). The Gospel of Enthusiasm: Salesmanship, Religion and Colonialism in Australian Department Stores in the 1920s and 1930s. Journal of Contemporary History, 51(1), 91-123. [More Information]
2015
- Loy-Wilson, L. (2015). Business Guidebooks and Cross-cultural Engagement between Australia and China. In Chengxin Pan, David Walker (Eds.), Australia and China: Challenges and Ideas in Cross-cultural Engagement, (pp. 51-64). Beijing: China Social Sciences Press.
2014
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2014). A Chinese shopkeeper on the Atherton Tablelands: Tracing connections between regional Queensland and regional China in Taam Szu Pui's My life and work. Queensland Review, 21(2), 160-176. [More Information]
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2014). New directions in Chinese-Australian history. History Australia, 11(3), 233-238.
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2014). Rural Geographies and Chinese Empires: Chinese Shopkeepers and Shop-life in Australia. Australian Historical Studies, 45(3), 407-424. [More Information]
2012
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2012). White Cargo: Australian residents, trade and colonialism in Shanghai between the wars. History Australia, 9(3), 154-177.
2011
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2011). 'Liberating' Asia: Strikes and Protest in Sydney and Shanghai, 1920-39. History Workshop Journal, 72, 74-102. [More Information]
2009
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2009). 'Reading in Brown Paper': Beckett's Budget and the Sensationalist Press in Interwar Sydney. Media International Australia, 131(May), 70-82.
- Loy-Wilson, S. (2009). Peanuts and Publicists: 'Letting Australian friends know the Chinese side of the Story' in interwar Sydney. History Australia, 6(1), 6.1-6.20.
Selected Grants
2022
- Chinese Business: economic and social survival in white Australia,1870-1940, Loy-Wilson S, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)
2020
- Opening Australias Multilingual Archive, Vickers A, Lu Y, Suter R, Loy-Wilson S, Moir C, Wilson S, Stenberg J, Alu G, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP)
In the media
"Discover hidden Chineses Australian history", Ballarat Times, 13 October 2024
"South Australian council votes to retain 'offensive' name of Chinamans Lane in Penola", ABC News, 9 October 2024
"Over 250 Australian spots use this 'derogatory' name, sparking calls for remaning -Is the term 'Chinaman' offensive?", SBS, 25 June 2024
"Who The Bloody Hell Are We?", SBS documentary, Season 1, Episode 3 featuring Adam Liaw, July 2023.
Sydney's Chinese Ghosts: the NSW Royal Commission into Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality 1891, public talk, University of Sydney Library, 24 May 2023
"Who Do You Think You Are?", SBS documentary, Season 12, Episode 4 featuring Jeff Fatt, June 2021
“80 years ago, Henry Lum Yip opened a grocers in Sydney. His grandkids still run it today”, expert reference, SBS News, 30 August 2020
“COVID-19 and Australia's history of racism”, podcast, Jay Ooi's 'Shoes Off' Podcast, 14 May 2020
"'Waltzing The Dragon' with Benjamin Law", television/documentary, ABC, July/August 2019
“Chinese immigration to Australia”, radio, Rear Vision, ABC Radio National, 2 September 2018
"Migration to China in early 20th Century", radio, Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue, ABC Radio National, 17 June 2017
"Search for Daisy Kwok uncovers Shanghai’s Lost History of Chinese-Australia", opinion, ABC News, 21 September 2016
"Shanghai Princess" (co-produced with Tamson Pietsch), radio, Earshot Programwith Miyuki Jokiranta, Radio National, 21 September 2016
