Claire Lowrie

Claire Lowrie is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong, specializing in colonial history, labour migration, and domestic service across tropical northern Australia and Southeast Asia. Her research employs transcolonial and comparative approaches to examine histories of labour, colonialism, and cross-cultural encounters.

Dr. Lowrie leads two ARC Discovery Projects: 1) a history of Chinese indentured labour in the Asia-Pacific region, and 2) a study of travelling Indian ayahs and Chinese amahs within the British Empire. Her book Masters and Servants: Cultures of Empire in the Tropics (2016) explores shared colonial cultures of domestic service between Singapore and Darwin, with particular attention to the preference for Chinese male domestic workers.

Analysis of Dr. Lowrie's recent publications reveals consistent focus on: 1) racialized labor systems under colonialism, 2) cross-colonial connections in domestic service practices, and 3) exceptions and continuities in indentured labor systems following formal abolition. Her work critically examines the intersections of gender, race, and class in colonial labor hierarchies.

She currently supervises doctoral research on cultural Cold War history in East Asia and serves as Deputy Editor for Labour History. Dr. Lowrie teaches Australian and Southeast Asian history, global and transnational history, and the history of colonialism at undergraduate and graduate levels.