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The ANU School of History is pleased to host the 2025 Allan Martin Lecture given by Professor Victoria Haskins.

What can the stories of South Asian ayahs â€“ nursemaids and domestic servants – tell us about the significance of race and women’s domestic labour in Australia’s settler colonial history, and why do these stories remain so elusive? In her talk, Professor Victoria Haskins reflects on the obscure lives of South Asian domestic workers who found themselves working in the Australian colonies. 

Drawing on decades of research in histories of race and women’s relationships in domestic service, she considers how we might connect the dots across archives, regions, and historiographies to bring visibility and meaning to these marginalised women’s presence in the past. Exploring how to respond to the methodological challenges of recovering and writing transcolonial and cross-cultural histories of the subaltern.