Frances is an associate professor of history at the University of Otago. She has published widely on colonial networks, oceanic mobilities and transnational labour cultures in the Pacific, with a particular focus on the age of steam. Her books include Oceania under Steam: Sea Transport and the Cultures of Colonialism and the co-authored Colonialism and Male Domestic Service across the Asia Pacific. She also edited New Zealand and the Sea: Historical Perspectives. Her research has been supported by the Australian Research Council and the National Library of Australia.

Refrigeration, food and the transformation of the Pacific, c.1870-1960

During her fellowship Frances will be examining the history of refrigeration and its application to food trades in the colonial Pacific. Frozen meat and dairy exports to Britain underpinned the transformation of New Zealand (and a lesser extent Australia) as the ’empire’s farm’. This project reorients the focus from dominant south-to-north exchanges, to consider how manufactured cold shaped settler colonial engagements with the island Pacific, including in controlling climate and changing patterns of production and consumption.