Tamara Jacka, BA (Hons) (ANU), PhD (Adelaide)
Senior Fellow, Department of Political and Social Change

Email: Tamara.Jacka@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Before coming to the ANU in 2001, Tamara Jacka taught Chinese language and courses on contemporary Chinese society and politics for ten years at Murdoch University. Her main research interests are in gender relations and social change in contemporary China. She is currently completing one ARC-funded project on Changing Approaches to Gender and Development in Rural China and beginning another on Gender, Family Conflict and Suicide in Rural China. Her publication Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change (ME Sharpe, Armonk, New York and London, 2006) won the American Anthropological Association's Francis Hsu prize for best book in East Asian anthropology in 2007.

Research Interests

Gender relations and social change in contemporary China; women in rural-urban migration; the Chinese women's movement; approaches to gender and development; and gender, family conflict and suicide.

Key Publications

• Women's Work in Rural China: Change and Continuity in an Era of Reform, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.
• On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China (ed. with Arianne Gaetano), Columbia University Press, New York, 2004.
• 'Finding a Place: Negotiations of Modernization and Globalization among Rural Women in Beijing.' Critical Asian Studies 37(1):51-74, 2005.
• Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York and London, England, 2006.

Career Highlights

Chair, Chinese Studies Programme, Murdoch University (1994, 1996, 1998-2000); Convenor of Graduate Studies in Gender, Sexuality and Culture at ANU, 2004-2005; Francis Hsu prize for best book in East Asian anthropology, 2007.