Associate ProfessorLucia Sorbera

Dr Sorbera’s research examines the modern and contemporary histories of West Asia and North Africa, with a focus on women, gender, and sexuality. She approaches these histories through feminist, oral‑historical and postcolonial frameworks, tracing how women’s intellectual and political practices reshape narratives of social and cultural transformation.

A central strand of her work investigates the relationship between feminist activism and the emergence of human rights activism, showing how women activists generated rights‑based languages, institutions, and transnational networks long before these were formally recognised. She also examines Arab and African women’s activism for peace and international justice, highlighting their contributions to accountability, memory, and the political labour of care.

Her research engages key arenas of contemporary governance, including humanitarian governance with a focus on refugees and migrants; border regimes, examined critically for their racialised and gendered logics; sexual and reproductive health, analysed as a site where national and international governance shape bodily autonomy; and socio‑economic and environmental justice, especially in relation to resource access.

These themes intersect with her collaborations with refugee artists and NGOs in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana on archives, memory, trauma and displacement. They also inform her leadership roles as Co‑Leader of the Cooperation and Conflict Research Cluster at the Vere Gordon Childe Center and as a member of the Steering Committee of the Powerful Stories Network.

Dr Sorbera has a substantial record of supervising doctoral, master’s, and honours research at the University of Sydney. Her PhD students have worked on memory, trauma, political transformation, environmental activism, and transnational feminist writing, with several projects resulting in publications. Her Master’s students have produced high‑distinction work on refugee women’s artistic practices, national identity, and women’s spiritual leadership in Islam. At Honours level, she has supervised numerous First‑Class and medal‑winning theses on topics including ecological approaches to colonial archives, Arab‑Australian feminism, world literature, masculinity in Arabic literature, civil society activism in Egypt, and gendered histories of the Syrian uprising. Together, these completions reflect her commitment to rigorous, interdisciplinary training in gender studies, oral history, cultural studies, and the modern histories of the Middle East and North Africa, grounded in ethical research practice and close intellectual mentorship.

Her editorial work in leading journals further informs this commitment to feminist, historically grounded scholarship.