Dr Rozanna Lilley

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I graduated from the University of Sydney in 1988 with a BA (Honours) degree and a University Medal. It was an extraordinary period and I was lucky to be taught by, amongst others, Les Hiatt, Francesca Merlan, Jeremy Beckett, Michael Allen and Viv Kondos. During that period my interests were in gender and Aboriginal society. Foucault and ‘the invention of tradition’ paradigm were strong influences. A portion of my thesis, which dealt with conflicting, and often gender-based, claims to authority in the Finnis River land claim was published in Oceania.

After briefly tutoring in the Sydney department, I did a PhD in anthropology at the then Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. There I researched contemporary cultural politics in Hong Kong as it was transitioning to Chinese rule. My writing at that time was also influenced by cultural studies and the kinds of gender theorising that emerged from the work of Judith Butler and queer theory. Eventually a book emerged from that intersection of anthropology and cultural studies, Staging Hong Kong: Gender and Performance in Transition (1998, Curzon Press and University of Hawaii Press). The book is taught in both anthropology and comparative literature courses.

After holding two postdoctoral fellowships (one in anthropology at Macquarie University and the other in the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the ANU), both of which extended my interests in representation through analyses of Hong Kong film and the semiotics of the 1997 handover ceremonies in Hong Kong, I accepted a position at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. At Lingnan I taught both in anthropology (including childhood) and in the first cultural studies degree established in Hong Kong.

I returned to Sydney in 2001 where I edited the Australian Journal of Anthropology for five years from 2004 to 2008.

My second child was diagnosed with autism in 2004. This event has profoundly affected my intellectual work. With my husband, Neil Maclean, I am now engaged in researching some of the sociocultural aspects of autism. We refer to this joint project as Everyday Autism in Australia. Our aim in undertaking this project is to draw attention to the everyday lives of children and adolescents with autism and their families. My focus is on mothers of children with autism in the preschool and early school years. I am also currently enrolled in a second PhD (in early childhood) in this area at the Children and Families Research Centre at Macquarie University.

At times I have wondered what connects these disparate research interests. As I become increasingly passionate about forms of anthropology that might make a genuine difference to how we understand our world, I see those connecting threads in social justice concerns and feminism.

Publications

Books

1998 Staging Hong Kong: Gender and Performance in Transition, ConsumAsian Book Series, Curzon Press and University of Hawaii Press.


Refereed Papers as Sole Author
2001 Teaching Elsewhere: Anthropological Pedagogy, Racism and Indifference in a Hong Kong Classroom, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 12(2): 127-154.

2000 The Hong Kong Handover, Communal/Plural: Journal of Transnational & Crosscultural Studies 8(2):161-180. Special issue titled ‘Negotiating (Trans)Nationalities’.

1999 Souveniring History in Hong Kong, Humanities Research 2:15-31. Special issue titled ‘Asia and Modernity’.

1996 Playing the Moment: The Conditional Present in Hong Kong, Anthropological Notebooks 2(1): 55-75. Special issue titled ‘Multiple Identities’ edited by Borut Telban.

1995 The Absolute Stage - Hongkong’s Revolutionary Opera, Social Analysis 38:76-91. Special issue titled ‘Too Many Meanings: A Critique of the Anthropology of Aesthetics’ edited by James Weiner.

1994 Chronicle of Women: A Hongkong Story, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 5(1&2): 86-112. Special issue titled ‘Women’s Difference: Sexuality and Maternity in Colonial and Postcolonial Discourses’ edited by Margaret Jolly.

1993 Claiming Identity: Film and Television in Hongkong, History and Anthropology 6(2-3): 261-292.

1991 The Double Bind: Performing Arts in Hongkong, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 2(3): 293-306.

1989 Gungarakayn Women Speak: Reproduction and the Transformation of Tradition, Oceania 60(2): 81-98.


Chapters
1997 Treading the Margins: Performing Hong Kong, in Evans, G. and M. Tam (eds.) Hong Kong: The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis, Surrey, Curzon Press, pp.124-147.

1989 Afterword: ‘Ethnicity’ and Anthropology, in Wijeyewardene, G. (ed.) Ethnic Groups Across National Boundaries in Mainland Southeast Asia, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp.205-218.