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Dr Jean Duruz 

Position: Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
Division/Portfolio: Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences
School/Unit: Division Office Research EAS
Group: Hawke Research Institute
Campus: Underdale Campus
Office: X2-17
Telephone: +61 8 830 21270
Fax: +61 8 830 22973
Email: Jean_dot_Duruz_at_unisa_dot_edu_dot_au
URL for Business Card: http://people.unisa.edu.au/Jean.Duruz


Research interests

  • Jean Duruz’s work focuses on issues of cosmopolitan citizenship and multiculturalism in Australia, as well as in a number of other societies, including those of Singapore, Malaysia, Britain, the United States and Mexico. It addresses questions of reciprocal human relationships and cultural exchanges in cosmopolitan societies - ways that these relationships and exchanges can enhance social sustainability. A major strand of her work uses food as a window for analysing relations of class, gender, religion and ethnicity and for understanding issues of inclusion, integration and citizenship in a changing society. Her work has implications for issues of social justice and inclusion, cultural integration, urban and regional planning, tourism and the social and cultural role of small business.

Research publications

Refereed Journal Articles

‘Quesadillas with Chinese black bean puree: eating together in “ethnic” neighbourhoods’, New Formations, 74, winter, 2011, pp 46-64.

‘Tastes of hybrid belonging: following the laksa trail in Katong, Singapore’, Continuum, 25, 5, 2011, pp 605-618.

Jean Duruz, ‘Bazaar Encounters: food, markets, belonging and citizenship in the cosmopolitan city’, with Susan Luckman and Peter Bishop, Continuum, 25, 5, 2011, pp 599-604.

‘At the table with hungry ghosts: intimate borderwork in Mexico City’, Cultural Studies Review, 17, 2, 2011, pp 198-218.

‘Living in Singapore, Travelling to Hong Kong, remembering Australia …: intersections of food and place’ in Emma Costantino and Sian Supski (eds), Culinary distinction (JAS 87), (API Network) Perth, 2006, pp 101-115.

‘Eating at the borders: culinary journeys’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23, 1, 2005, pp 51-69.

‘Adventuring and belonging: an appetite for markets’, Space and Culture, 7, 4, 2004, pp 427-445.

‘Haunted kitchens: cooking and remembering’, Gastronomica, 4, 1, 2004, pp 57-68.

‘Re-writing the village: geographies of food and belonging in Clovelly, Australia’, Cultural Geographies , 9, 4, 2002, pp 373-388

‘Home cooking, nostalgia and the purchase of tradition’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 12, 2, 2001, pp 21-32.

‘A nice baked dinner … or two roast ducks from Chinatown: identity grazing, Continuum, 14, 3, 2000, pp 289-301.

'Cuisine nostalgie?: tourism's romance with "the rural" ', Communal/Plural, 7, 1, 1999, pp 97-101.

'Food as nostalgia: eating the fifties and sixties', Australian Historical Studies, 30, 113, 1999, pp 231-250.

'The streets of Clovelly: food, difference and place-making', Continuum, 13, 3, 1999, pp 305-314.

'Dressing up daydreams: memory, femininity and narratives of fashion', The UTS Review, 1, 2, November, 1995, pp 130-149.

'Laminex dreams: women, suburban comfort and the negotiation of meanings', Meanjin, 53, 1, 1994, pp 99-110.

Book Chapters

‘Four dances of the sea: cooking “Asian” as embedded cosmopolitanism’ in Tan Chee-Beng (ed), Chinese food and foodways in Southeast Asia and beyond, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2011, pp. 192-217.

'Geographies of food: "afters", Progress in Human Geography Online First, April 29, 2010.(with Ian Cook et al)

‘Floating food: eating “Asia’ in kitchens of the diaspora’, Emotion, Space and Society,3, 2010, pp 45-49.

‘Eating at the borders: culinary journeys’, Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayuthum (eds), Everyday Multiculturalism, Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp 105-121.

‘Table talk: doing ethnography in the kitchen’ in Katrina Schlunke and Nicole Anderson (eds), Cultural theory in everyday practice, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp 237-247.

‘In the middle of nowhere; the rail corridor to Asia’, with Peter Bishop and Alan Mayne in Alan Mayne (ed), Beyond the Black Stump: Histories of Outback Australia, Perth: Network Books, 2008.

‘From Malacca to Adelaide: fragments towards a biography of cooking, yearning and laksa’ in Sidney C.H. Cheung and Tan Chee-Beng (eds), Food and foodways in Asia: resource, tradition and cooking, London: Routledge, 2007, pp 183-200.

(with Carol Johnson) 'Mourning at a distance: Australians and the death of a British princess' in Adrian Kear and Deborah Steinberg (eds), Mourning Diana: nation, culture and the performance of grief, London: Routledge, 1999, pp 142-154.

(with Carol Johnson) ‘Appropriating the people’s princess’ in Re:Public (ed), Planet Diana: cultural studies and global mourning, Kingswood NSW: Research Centre for Intercommunal Studies, University of Western Sydney Nepean, 1997, pp 45-48.

'Romancing the suburbs?,' in Katherine Gibson and Sophie Watson (eds), Metropolis now: planning and the urban in contemporary Australia (Pluto) Leichhardt, 1994, pp 17-32.

'Suburban houses revisited,' in Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (eds), Memory and history in twentieth century Australia, (Oxford University Press) Melbourne, 1994, pp 198-213.

'Suburban gardens: cultural notes' in Sarah Ferber, Chris Healy and Chris McAuliffe (eds), Beasts of suburbia: reinterpreting cultures in Australian suburbs, (Melbourne University Press) Melbourne, 1994, pp 198-213.


Research Degree Supervisor

Areas of research expertise include cultural and feminist theory in relation to memory, identity and urban life, and ethnographic approaches to documenting everyday 'lived' cultures. Current research stresses the connections of food, place, identity and memory in contemporary western cultures especially as these represent engagements with meanings of 'Asia', globalisation and cosmopolitanism.

Current Projects:

Eating 'Asia': Asian Kitchens and Identities in Negotiation
 This research examines everyday intercultural interactions through food as ways of problematising ‘Asian’ and ‘Australian’ identity negotiations. Focusing on foodscapes in Adelaide and Singapore and on differently-positioned users, the research is documenting a range of material (photographs, sound recordings, ethnographic observations, interview narratives) for each site. Through analysis of this material, the project is engaging with recent debates on Australian multiculturalism as ‘ethnic enrichment’, and on ‘eating Asian’ as forms of consumer cannibalism. Finally, the project speculates on more complex understandings of ‘Asian’ and ‘Australian’ within a milieu of global cosmopolitanism and glocalised practices of place.




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