My research has focused on two main fields of study:

• Critical development studies (development volunteering, culture and social change, gender and development, poverty reduction policy making)

• Social and cultural geographies of migration, ethnicity and race  (refugee and migrant settlement, constructions of racial and ethnic identities, labour migration)

In critical development studies my work has focused on theoretically informed analysis of development policies and practices. Empirically this work has centred on gender and poverty reduction strategies. My recent research projects examined the impacts of international developent volunteering, and the 20th century history of Red Cross humanitarianism.

In social and cultural geography my research has examined how migrants and refugees reconstruct their identities in Australia within terrains and settlement contexts that are structured by race, class, gender, and underpinned by often implicit notions of modernity and development. I currently work on temporary international labour migration, how it is experienced, and how it impacts in different places.

External grants:

Australian Seasonal Workers Programme and well-being impacts in Timor-Leste. (ARCLP 200100149, 2021-2024, CI) 

Resilient humanitarianism: the League of the Red Cross Societies, 1919-1991 (ARC DP190101171; 2019-2023, CI)
Cosmopolitan development: the impacts of international volunteering (ARC LP120200085; 2012-2015, Lead CI)
From stranger to citizen: migration, modernisation and racialisation in the making of the new Australian (ARC DP0665782; 2006-07, Lead CI)