International Adoptee Community

Researcher: Sociology, Migration, Ethnicity, Transnational and Transracial Adoption, Family Studies, Race

Publications

Willing is an early career researcher. She is currently working with Professor Zlatko Skrbis and Dr Ian Woodward as a research assistant for a book on cosmopolitanism to be published by SAGE, and as part of the research team for the Globally Engaged ARC Project with Assoc. Professor Lynda Cheshire. She also teaches sociology and qualitative research methods.

Committed to community engaged and socially inclusive research outlooks, her established and developing research interests combined spans issues of migration, ethnicity, family studies, and transnational adoption, and include theories of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, critical race studies, queer theory and screen cultures.

Willing completed a PhD in Sociology at the School of Social Science at UQ, graduating in December 2010. Her thesis explored Australian parents who adopt children from Asia and Africa. She also has a MA by Thesis, where she studied Vietnamese adoptees, and a BA in Communication (Film Major) from The University of Technology, Sydney. Willing was also a Rockefeller Fellow in the Humanities for the Vietnamese Diaspora project at the University of Massachusetts, Boston in 2002/3.

She is currently working on several publications on the topic of transnational adoption, and has extensive community experience in the area, including creating the Adopted Vietnamese International (AVI) network. Willing has also been invited to discuss her research and community experiences for the Attorney General’s national advisory group on adoption in 2011, at the Australian Federal Government’s 2020 Summit in 2008, at national and international conferences, and at various Queensland advisory groups and education sessions.

Willing is also currently the Co-Convener of the Asian Australian Film Forum and Network (AAFFN). The AAFFN brings together individuals and groups from the arts, academia, community sector, film industry and media to explore and promote Asian Australian representations in film, television and online. Collaborations have included with the AASRN and SBS Film (AAFF event in 2011), and Peril Online Journal of Asian Australian Arts and Cultures (Special Issue 12 on the AAFFN in 2012). She was also the Co-Convenor of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN) from 2010 – 2011, and was the Chair of the ‘An Asian Australian Occasion’ short film festival and panels event sponsored by The UQ Equity Office’s Diversity Week grants scheme in 2007.