Social Sciences

Dr Sallie Yea

B.A. (Hons) (Monash), Ph D (Monash)

Sallie Yea is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences. Prior to this she held academic positions in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea. She received her Ph D in Human Geography/ Asian Studies at Monash University in 2000. She currently holds professional memberships to the Australian Institute of Geographers (IAG), the Association of American Geographers (AAS), the Southeast Asian Geographers Association (SEAGA), and the Institute of British Geographers (IBG). She is the current co-convenor of the Political Geography group of the IAG. She also sits of the editorial board of the journal Anti-Trafficking Review.

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Sallie has held teaching and research positions in Human Geography and International Development respectively at universities in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea. She has taught a wide range of at both undergraduate and Masters level subject in Human Geography (Political Geography, Migration and Population Geography, Tourism Geography, Migration Geography, Cultural and Social Geography, and Geographical Methods and Fieldwork, amongst others).

In the field of International she has also taught at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in Development Theory, Gender Issue and Practice, Participatory Approaches to Development, Human Trafficking, and Migration. Her current teaching responsibilities include Environmental Practice and Sustainable Development.

She has also conducted capacity building training for governmental and non-governmental organisations on the subjects of human trafficking and forced migration. She welcomes inquiries from organisations and individuals wishing to collaborate or undertake graduate research projects with her in these fields.

Sallie is a Human Geographer whose research sits at the nexus of Political and Migration Geography. She focuses on human trafficking, precarious migration and transnationalism and the ways these issues intersect with climate change, gender inequality and the political economy of development. She has published widely on these subjects. In her research she is committed to collaborative engagements with both academic and non-academic organisations to advance a social justice and right-based approach to inclusive and sustainable social change.

She is currently undertaking two research projects. The first examines the abandonment, desertion and strandedness of precarious migrant workers and is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The second examines issues of injuries, illness and death amongst precarious migrant workers and victims of human trafficking and received funding from La Trobe University. Both these studies are multi-sector, including construction work, the offshore fishing industry and paid domestic work. The geographical focus on this research is Southeast and South Asia and the Pacific.

Sallie and her team (Christina Stringer and Bec Strating) recently completed a large study examining access to, and limits of justice and protection for migrant fishing crew from/ in Southeast Asia, with publications to date in the journals Political Geography, Journal of Human Trafficking and Marine Policy.