Antonia Finnane

Antonia Finnane (born 11 December 1952) is professor of Chinese History at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests have been in migration from China to Australia, particularly by Jewish refugees and in urban and cultural change in China, concentrating on consumption and clothing. Finnane retired from her teaching position at the end of 2018 following a career spanning 33 years.

Education Sydney-born Finnane graduated from the University of Sydney with a BA (Hons I) and the University Medal in History. She moved to Canberra, where she undertook a PhD at the Australian National University, interrupting her candidacy for study in China at the Beijing Language Institute and Nanjing University, in the years 1976-7. Her PhD thesis, submitted in 1985, was "Prosperity and Decline under the Qing: Yangzhou and its hinterland, 1644–1810".

Career Finnane has been awarded grants by the Australian Research Council for three Discovery projects: "Consumption in Late Imperial China", "Fashionable times" and "The fate of the artisan in revolutionary China: tailors in Beijing, 1930s–1960s". Her work has also been funded by two University of Melbourne grants, one in which she compared luxury in Renaissance Italy with Ming China and the second a study of "Memory and Commemoration in Asia and the West".

Works

As author

As editor

Awards and recognition

2006 Joseph Levenson Book Prize for a work on pre-1900 China, for Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese city, 1550–1850 Woodward Medal in Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Melbourne, 2007