Management Committee
President
Dr Karen Schamberger is a historian and museum curator. She is currently a curator in the exhibitions team at the National Library of Australia and is also Vice-President of the Young Historical Society which manages the local museum. She has previously worked as a consultant historian to 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art on The Burrangong Affray exhibit (2018), as a curator at the National Museum of Australia and the Immigration Museum, Melbourne and as a Research Assistant at Deakin University and the University of Wollongong. She is interested in Chinese Australian history, cross-cultural relations, migration and transnational histories, as well as material culture and museology.
Vice-President
Dr Juanita Kwok was awarded a scholarship by Charles Sturt University, Bathurst to do a PhD and completed her doctoral thesis “The Chinese in Bathurst: Recovering Forgotten Histories” in 2019. Juanita has a particular interest in the histories of Chinese Australians in rural New South Wales and has published papers on Chinese miners on the Western gold fields of New South Wales and the Chinese community in Wellington New South Wales. Juanita is President of Our Chinese Past inc. an incorporated association which conducts projects to support regional museums in preserving, researching and promoting Chinese Australian heritage artefacts in their collections. Juanita is also on the History Advisory Panel of the Museum of Chinese in Australia. Juanita is a member of Chinese Australian Historical Society (CAHS), and has presented her research at CAHS meetings, Dragontails, China Inc., Australasian Mining History Association and Australian Historical Association conferences. Juanita lives in Bathurst NSW.
Secretary/Treasurer
Paul Macgregor, historian and heritage consultant, is President of The Uncovered Past Institute, which undertakes archaeological excavations with public participation. He was Curator of Melbourne’s Chinese Museum from 1990 to 2005, and has published widely, organised many conferences and exhibitions, and worked on several major research projects, all on Chinese Australian history. He is also a committee member, curator and historian at Our Chinese Past Inc, which conducts research projects on Chinese Australian history and heritage. He is currently researching Chinese economic activity in Australia, and the material culture heritage of Chinese Australians, as part of a wider investigation of the nineteenth and early twentieth century co-evolution of European and Asian societies in Australasia, China, Southeast Asia, North America and the Pacific/Indian Ocean worlds.
www.paulmacgregor.info
Dr Alanna Kamp (BA BSc (UNSW); PhD (WSU)) is Lecturer in Geography and Urban Studies, Western Sydney University. She is also Research Fellow in the Young and Resilient Research Centre (WSU), and academic member of the Challenging Racism Project (WSU) and Diversity and Human Rights Research Centre (WSU). Dr Kamp’s research contributions lie in Australian historical geography, particularly in the areas of multiculturalism, racism and anti-racism, identity and intersectionality. She has published pioneering and award-winning work on Chinese Australian women’s experiences of national and cultural identity, racism and belonging since 1901. She has also published in the areas of Indigenous Studies, Asian Australian Studies, and Islamophobia. Dr Kamp has recently led a national study on Asian Australians’ experiences of racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also conducting a national project on ‘mixed race’ young Australians’ experiences of identity and belonging. Her book, Intersectional Lives: Chinese Australian women in White Australia has just been published by Routledge (April 2022).
https://westernsydney.edu.au/staff_profiles/uws_profiles/doctor_alanna_kamp
Dr Grace Gassin is a Curator, Asian New Zealand Histories, at the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, overseeing the Asian New Zealand communities portfolio. An Auckland-born Chinese New Zealander who has lived on both sides of the Tasman Sea, Grace completed her doctoral studies in History at the University of Melbourne in 2016. Her research focused on Chinese Australians' memories of their participation in Chinese community life (1940s-1970s) and formed the basis of her 2014 ABC Radio National feature Dancing with Dragons: Chinese Debutante Balls. Grace is the former President of the Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria and has been the President of the Dragon Tails Association since 2016. She was also a co-convenor of the 2017 Dragon Tails conference. She returned home to New Zealand in 2017 and is currently completing a Chinese studies history project for the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute.
Dr Sandi Robb is a historian and cultural heritage specialist with interpretation, research, exhibition, curatorial and cultural heritage experience across North Queensland. She has presented at local, national and international conferences on Chinese Australian History, and is a published author with her book Cairns Chinatown: A Heritage Study. In 2018-19 she collaborated with the Ingham Family History Association, and recently held a large exhibition, Re-discovering Buk- Ti: Chinese Settlers in the Herbert River Valley. She is a founding member and current president of the Chinese Heritage in Northern Australia Inc., a not for profit organization committed to promoting northern Australia’s Chinese History and Heritage.
Facebook: Sandi Robb History and Heritage Consultant