Dr Agnieszka Sobocinska
Lecturer, National Centre for Australian Studies & Graduate Tourism Program
BA (Hons) (Syd), PhD (Syd)
View contact details in Monash Staff Directory
Biography
Dr. Agnieszka Sobocinska joined the National Centre for Australian Studies in 2011. Her research interests lie in the intersection between popular opinion and high politics, especially in Australian diplomacy and foreign affairs. These interests underpin her teaching into both the Australian Studies and Graduate Tourism programs.
Agnieszka holds a PhD from the University of Sydney. Her doctoral thesis examined the history of Australian travel to Asia from the Pacific War to the present day, showing how travel experiences helped shape both public opinion and diplomacy towards the region. She is building a reputation as an historian of Australian relations to Asia and as a scholar of travel and tourism, with academic publications in both these fields. Her recent publications have been distinguished with prizes by the Australian Historical Association, the History Council of New South Wales and the International Australian Studies Association.
Agnieszka is a consciously interdisciplinary researcher, and regularly presents at national and international conferences in the fields of history, Australian studies, Asian studies and travel and tourism. She has also sought to engage a wider audience, publishing feature articles in newspapers including The Australian and the newsletters of several cultural institutions; and featuring on ABC Radio's Hindsight.
Agnieszka has strong professional and personal links with Asia. She has spent a year at the Royal University of Phnom Penh as part of AusAID's Australian Youth Ambassador for Development program. More recently, she spent eight months in Indonesia on an Endeavour Research Fellowship. Her work there focussed on contemporary Australian mass tourism to Bali, and she traced how this most common of all Asian experiences has affected Australian attitudes to Asia. She also analysed official attempts to intervene in outbound travel and tourism through government travel advisories and warnings during her time in Bali.
Research Interests
Agnieszka's research has been shaped by an ongoing interest in popular ideas about cultural and racial Others. She is particularly interested in the intersections between popular perceptions and attitudes - both positive and negative - and official policy. To date, she has focussed this interest on the history of Australian relations with Asia. In particular, she has been active in researching how travel and tourism have influenced popular attitudes towards the region; and how these have gone on to influence Australian-Asian relations. This research has led to an ongoing interest in the continuing force of colonial and proto-colonial culture in the post-war, post-colonial context.
More recently, Agnieszka has begun researching the cultural history of foreign aid and development. As part of this, she is investigating how popular opinions about race and Otherness underpinned and motivated humanitarian and political attempts to alleviate foreign suffering. She is researching both popular and official developments, from colonial-era notions of a White Man's Burden, through the institutionalisation of foreign development programs and agencies in the post-war and Cold War periods, to the present-day, celebrity-driven pop culture of humanitarianism and foreign aid. While the focus is on Australia, Agnieszka is pursuing a transnational approach to this research, paying particular attention to developments in established donor nations such as the United Kingdom and the United States and emerging donor nations including Japan and China. She is also interested in popular attitudes to foreign aid and development in aid-receiving nations including India, Indonesia, Cambodia in Asia and Nigeria, Somalia and Rwanda in Africa.
Current Research Projects
- History of Australian travel and tourism to Asia.
- Australian mass tourism to Bali.
- Government Travel Advisories and their impacts on perceptions of Others.
- Cultural history of foreign aid and development.
Keywords
History of Australian perceptions of Others, particularly Asian Others; history of travel and tourism; links between popular opinion and official diplomacy; history of Australian-Asian relations; cultural history of foreign aid and development, especially popular perceptions of poverty and aid; Australia's aspirations to colonial power in Asia and the Pacific; Colonialism and New Imperial Histories.
Teaching
ATS1259: Australian Idol
ATS2386/ATS3386: Broken Earth – Journeys through the Australian Landscape
APG5717: Applied Industry Research
APG5390: Contemporary Issues in Tourism
Areas of Supervision
Agnieszka is interested in supervising students working on:
- The history of travel and tourism.
- The cultural history of Australian foreign relations.
- Australian-Asian cultural and political relations.
- Cultural history of foreign aid and development.
Grants and Awards
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2010
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Endeavour Research Fellowship undertaken at Universitas Udayana, Indonesia (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations). Max Kelly Medal awarded for ‘The Language of Scars: POWs' bodies and the colonial order' (History Council of New South Wales). AHA/CAL Postgraduate Prize awarded for ‘Innocence Lost and Paradise Regained: Sand, Surf and Australia's Place in the World' (Australian Historical Association/Copyright Agency Limited). |
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2008
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John Barrett Award for Australian Studies (Research Higher Degree Category), awarded for ‘Australian fellow-travellers to China: Devotion and Deceit in the People's Republic.' (International Australian Studies Association). Milt Luger Fellowship (State Library of New South Wales). |
| 2006 | Norman McCann Summer Scholarship in Australian History (National Library of Australia). |
| 2005 | Australian Postgraduate Award (Department of Education, Science and Training). |
| 2004 | Australasian Pioneers' Club Scholarship for History (University of Sydney). |
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Edited Books
Agnieszka Sobocinska and David Walker (eds.), ‘Absent Asia: Reviewing Australia's Asian Pasts,' Collection of scholarly essays probing Australia's historical connections with Asia. Publication expected in late 2011.
Book Chapters
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Friends and Neighbours: Travel and Politics in Postwar Asia,' in Agnieszka Sobocinska and David Walker (eds.), Absent Asia: Reviewing Australia's Asian Pasts, forthcoming 2011.
Journal Articles
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Innocence Lost and Paradise Regained: Bali and Australia's Place in the World,' forthcoming, vol. 8, no. 2 (August 2011). Winner of the Australian Historical Association/CAL Postgraduate Prize.
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘The Language of Scars: Australian prisoners of war and the colonial order,' History Australia, vol. 7, no. 3, December 2010, pp. 59.1-59.20. Winner of the Max Kelly Medal, History Council of NSW.
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Prisoners of Opinion: Australians in Asian Captivity, 1942-2006', Australian Studies (UK), vol. 1, no. 1 (December 2009), http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/australian-studies/article/view/1561/0
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Australian fellow-travellers to China: Devotion and Deceit in the People's Republic,' Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 32, no. 3 (September 2008), pp. 323-334.
Winner of the John Barrett Award for Australian Studies (Research Higher Degree Category), International Australian Studies Association.
Refereed Conference Proceedings
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Two days rest in the city of sin: Australian soldiers on R & R in Vietnam,' Proceedings of Resorting to the Coast: Tourism, Heritage and Cultures of the Seaside, Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds, 2009.
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘The Role of the Asia-Educator in the Post-War Period- The Case of Frank Clune,' in Adrian Vickers and Margaret Hanlon (eds.), Asia Reconstructed: Proceedings of the 16th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, 2006: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2006/Sobocinska-Agnieszka-ASAA2006.pdf
Publications (Non-Refereed and General Audience)
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Travel, Tourism and Diplomacy: Is the Australian Government a ‘Smart Traveller'?' Australian Policy and History, www.aph.org.au, November 2010.
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Scandalous Revelations,' 8 September 2009 (History Week event), Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney.
Featured in ABC's Hindsight Program, ‘Asia Overland: adventures on the hippie trail,' Radio National (Australia), Sean O'Brien producer, broadcast date 5 July 2009.
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘The Ultimate Trip: Australians on the Hippie Trail', NLA News, (National Library of Australia), vol. 16, no. 11 (August 2006).
Sobocinska, Agnieszka, ‘Hippies blazed a trail to those far-out reaches', feature article, The Australian, 4 October 2006, pp. 26-27.
Selected Conference Activity
| 2011 | Public Diplomacy in Theory and Practice: Culture, Information and Interpretation in Australian-Indian Relations 8-9 April 2011 Paper Title: ‘Diggin' on the East: The Hippie Trail and Australian-Indian Relations' Australians Abroad: An Interdisciplinary Conference |
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2010
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In the Image of Asia: moving between and within locations 15th Biennial Conference of the Australian Historical Association (AHA) |
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2009
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Resorting to the Coast: Tourism, Heritage and Cultures of the Seaside 18th New Zealand Asian Studies Society International Conference |
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2008 |
17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) |
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2006 |
16th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) International Conference on Travel Writing |
Professional Memberships
Australian Historical Association (AHA), 2005-
International Australian Studies Association (InASA), 2009-
Australian Tourism Research Unit, Monash University, 2011-
Network for Research in Women's History, 2011-
Melbourne Feminist History Group, 2011-
