Real name:
Biography:
Christine de Matos' primary research interest is the Australian role in the Allied Occupation of Japan (1946-1952), in particular using gender, race and class to elucidate the power dynamics of the occupier-occupied relationship. She also interrogates the role of labour in enabling military occupations, and has a particular focus on the use of domestic workers in occupier homes. Her other research interests include Australian history, Japanese history, Australia-Asia relations, gender and history, dance and history and digital history. She has previously been a Japan Foundation Fellow (2004), was awarded the J.G. Crawford Award from the Australia-Japan Research Centre at the Australian National University in 1999, and in 2020 was awarded the Circa prize for best article.
Christine has published widely on Australia and the Allied Occupation, including Imposing Peace and Prosperity: Australia, Social Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan 1945-1949 (ASP, 2008), Gender, Power and Military Occupations (co-edited with Rowena Ward, Routledge 2012), and Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied (co-edited with Mark E. Caprio, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Recent scholarly activity:
I am currently working on several projects:
1. Special issue on Forced Migrations in the Asia Pacific during WWII, with Rowena Ward and Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi
2. Journal article on role reversals in WWII with a focus on Indigenous and ex-POW soldiers in occupied Japan, with Cara Cross.
3. Special issue on classicism, commemoration and the World Wars with Karen McCluskey and Anna Carden-Coyne
4. Co-editor of an edited book on visual sources and military labour, with Jeongmin Kim, Olli Siitonen, Alex Touloumtzidis and Bettina Blum
5. Comparative study of occupied Germany and Japan, especially the role of families, with Bettina Blum, Rowena Ward, Maho Toyoda and Kazuto Oshio
Recent publications:
C. de Matos, '"A Corrupt Western Ethic”: Australian Responses to Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law during the Allied Occupation', in Maho Toyoda (ed) A Global History of Japan's Eugenic Protection Law, Tokyo: Jimbun Shoin, 2024.
C. de Matos, "The Home as a Space of Re-Education: Imperialism, Military Occupation, and Housekeeping Manuals". The International History Review (2024).
C. de Matos, "Visualising the Modern Housewife: US Occupier Women and the Home in the Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949". Histories 4, no. 1 (2024): 1-23.
J. Heinemann, C. de Matos, F. Sundevall & A. Ahlbäck, "Unpacking coercion in gendered war labor", special issue on Gender, War and Coerced Labor (eds. Heinemann, de Matos, Sundevall and Ahlbäck), Labor History 64, no. 3 (2023): 225-237.
C. de Matos and Rowena Ward, "Forgotten Forced Migrants of War: Civilian internment of Japanese in British India, 1941–1946", Journal of Contemporary History 56, no 4: (2021): 1102-1125.
C. de Matos, "Three Domestic Workers, Two Internment Camps and a War: A Journey from Singapore to British India", Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 93, Part 1, no. 318 (2020): 23–42.
C. de Matos, "Dance as Performative Public History?: A Journey through Spartacus", Circa: The Journal of Professional Historians no. 7 (2020): 27-33.
Forthcoming research:
Book chapter: "Framing the Family: Visualising occupier domestic masculinities in the work of military occupation".
Special journal issue on classicism and war.
Special journal issue on mobilities in the Asia Pacific War.
Other activities:
"The Home as a Space of Re-Education" was co-runner up in the NCIS Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize for 2024.
Essay "Women in Love (with the Enemy): Forgotten Battles of World War Two" was awarded the Ann Moyal Essay Prize by the ISAA in 2023.