Victoria Stead

Victoria Stead is Associate Professor and Associate Head of School (Research) at Deakin University. She serves as President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies and Discipline Convener for Anthropology.

Her research examines race-labor intersections in Australian horticulture and postcolonial legacies of conflict in Papua New Guinea. Fieldwork focuses on Pacific Islander migrant workers and WWII memory landscapes.

Stead's publications analyze racialized labor in agriculture, intergenerational belonging, and colonial power structures in labor mobility. Recent work develops critical perspectives on modern slavery discourses through historical analysis of Pacific labor.

Research Grants:

• Labour, Race and Belonging (ARC DECRA)
• Beyond Recognition (ARC Discovery Indigenous)
• Women Remember the War (DFAT-funded oral history)

She teaches Anthropology of Poverty and Development while supervising doctoral research on decolonizing wellbeing and posthumanist philosophy.