Dr Lisa Lau

Title: Lecturer
Phone: (+44) 01782 7 33613
Email:
Location: William Smith Building : WS 1.29
Role: Year 2 Geography Tutor
Contacting me: E-mail at any time to set up an appointment
Lau_Lisa

I am a Malaysian of Chinese descent who left home (Kuala Lumpur) to indulge a passion: to read for a degree in English Literature. This was followed by an MA (by research and thesis) on African American Literature, which then opened the floodgates of my interests in cross cultural, world literature. My PhD (at Durham University) was done in the Geography Department, positioning my thesis on South Asian Literature at the crossroads of literary, cultural and geographical studies. I am currently an interdisciplinary Geographer, who also teaches in Sociology, continuing to work in the interstices of the Social Sciences and the Humanities.

Eastern Market My research areas include South Asia, postcolonialism, gender studies, cross-cultural studies, and literary studies; encompassing the issues of power, narrative, identity construction, class chasms, social and cultural change, and interdisciplinarity.

A significant proportion of my current research focuses on the representation, positioning, and social and spatial entrapment of women. My results, derived from detailed textual analysis, interviews and discussions with authors, publishers and readers, cyberspace fieldwork, and increasingly, electronic ethnography, have identified many significant ongoing changes in the creation of South Asian women’s images and identities (in a South Asia undergoing rapid economic and social changes), as well as cultural changes within diasporic South Asian communities.

I am a member of the Research Institute for Law Politics and Justice and am also affiliated to the Research Institute for the Humanities.

See extended publication list

Selected Publications

  • Lau LE and Mendes A. 2013. Authorities of Representation: Speaking to and Speaking for. Connotations (New York): a journal of critical debate, vol. 22(1).
  • Lau LE. 2013. FORTHCOMING: Representations Juxtaposed. A Home Author and a Diasporic Author Depict Coorg. In South Asian diaspora. Rodopi.
  • Lau LE. 2013. No Longer Good Girls. Gender Place and Culture.
  • Lau LE. 2013. Representations Juxtaposed: A Home Author and a Diasporic Author Depict Coorg. In South Asian Diaspora [to be confirmed]. New York: Cambria Press.
  • LAU L. 2011. Introduction: Re-Orientalism: A new manifestation of Orientalism. In Re-orientalism and South Asian Identity Politics. Lau and Mendes AC (Eds.). Routledge.

Full Publications List show

Books

  • Lau L. 2010. Re-Orientalism and South Asian Identity Politics: The Oriental Other Within. London: Routledge.

Journal Articles

  • Lau LE and Mendes A. 2013. Authorities of Representation: Speaking to and Speaking for. Connotations (New York): a journal of critical debate, vol. 22(1).
  • Lau LE. 2013. No Longer Good Girls. Gender Place and Culture.
  • Lau LE. 2011. The Male South Asian Domestic Servant: Master-Servant Relationships, Class Chasms, and Systematic Emasculation. Sri Lanka Journal of Humnanities, vol. 37(1&2), 35-54.
  • Lau L. 2010. South Asian mistresses and servants: The fault lines between class chasms and individual intimacies. Pakistani Journal of Women's Studies.
  • Lau L. 2010. Literary Representations of the 'New Indian Woman': The Single, Working, Urban, Middle Class Indian Woman Seeking Personal Autonomy. JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN DEVELOPMENT, vol. 5(2), 271-292. link> doi>
  • Lau L. 2009. Re-Orientalism: The Perpetration and Development of Orientalism by Orientals. MODERN ASIAN STUDIES, vol. 43, 571-590. link> doi>
  • Lau L and Pasquini M. 2008. 'Jack of all trades'? The negotiation of interdisciplinarity within geography. GEOFORUM, vol. 39(2), 552-560. link> doi>
  • Daya S and Lau L. 2007. Power and narrative. NARRATIVE INQUIRY, vol. 17(1), 1-11. link>
  • Lau LE. 2007. The language of power and the power of language. Narrative Inquiry, vol. 17(1), 27-47.
  • Lau L. 2007. The language of power and the power of language. NARRATIVE INQUIRY, vol. 17(1), 27-47. link>
  • LAU LE. 2006. Emotional and Domestic Territories: The Positionality of Women as Reflected in the Landscape of the Home in Contemporary South Asian Women's Writings. Modern Asian Studies, vol. 40(4), 1097-1116. doi>
  • LAU LE. 2006. The New Indian woman: Who is she, and what is “New” about her?. Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 29(2), 159-171. doi>
  • LAU LE, Barke M, Mowl G. 2006. UK Local Authority Place Promotion: changing contexts and changing priorities. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL STUDIES, vol. 2(1), 20-42.
  • Lau L. 2005. Making the difference: The differing presentations and representations of South Asia in the contemporary fiction of home and diasporic South Asian women writers. MODERN ASIAN STUDIES, vol. 39, 237-256. link> doi>
  • Lau L and Pasquini MW. 2004. Meeting grounds: perceiving and defining interdisciplinarity across the arts, social sciences and sciences. INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE REVIEWS, vol. 29(1), 49-64. link> doi>
  • Lau L. 2004. Virtually positioned: investigating identity and positionality in a case study of South Asian literature in cyberspace. INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE REVIEWS, vol. 29(1), 65-76. link> doi>
  • Lau L. 2003. Equating womanhood with victimhood: the positionality of women protagonists in the contemporary writings of South Asian women. Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 26(4), 369-378. doi>

Chapters

  • Lau LE. 2013. FORTHCOMING: Representations Juxtaposed. A Home Author and a Diasporic Author Depict Coorg. In South Asian diaspora. Rodopi.
  • Lau LE. 2013. Representations Juxtaposed: A Home Author and a Diasporic Author Depict Coorg. In South Asian Diaspora [to be confirmed]. New York: Cambria Press.
  • LAU L. 2011. Introduction: Re-Orientalism: A new manifestation of Orientalism. In Re-orientalism and South Asian Identity Politics. Lau and Mendes AC (Eds.). Routledge.
  • Lau and Mendes. 2011. Re-Orientalism in Contemporary Indian Writing in English (IWE). In Re-Orientalism and South Asian Identity Politics: The Oriental Other Within. London: Routledge.

Year 1

  • GEG-10008 Geography in a Changing World
  • GEG 10006 Geographical Skills II

 

Year 2

  • GEG-20015 Space and Society
  • GEG- 20010 Practical Human Geography
  • GEG 20009 Geographical Research Training - Singapore & Malaysia Fieldcourse

 

Year 3

  • GEG-30015 Postcolonialism in South Asia (Geography: Level 3) - Module Leader
  • Analysing Culture (Media Communications and Culture : Level 2)