Rate My Professor Catriona Stevens

Dr. Catriona Stevens, also known as Catriona Turnbull (Stevens), is an early-career sociologist with expertise in migration, mobilities, social ageing, and care practices. She completed her PhD in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia in 2020, with a thesis entitled 'Unlikely Settlers in Exceptional Times: The Impact of Social Class and Selective Migration Policies on the Recent Migrations of Trade-Skilled Labour Migrants from China to Australia.' She holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Oxford (2003). Her career trajectory includes an Associate Lecturer position at Murdoch University from 2018 to 2020, during which she received the College of Arts, Business, Law and Social Sciences Teaching Award in 2019 and 2020. Subsequently, she served as a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia (2020-2022) and held a Forrest Prospect Fellowship (2021-2023). Currently, she is Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow and ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow in the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University, based in the Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab.

Stevens' research investigates labour migration, particularly Chinese trade-skilled migrants to Australia, transnational caregiving, digital kinning among migrant grandparents, elder abuse in aged care, and the role of migration policy in shaping class dynamics and care workforces. Notable publications include 'Temporary work, permanent visas and circular dreams: Temporal disjunctures and precarity among Chinese migrants to Australia' (Current Sociology, 2019); 'Digital Anticipation: Facilitating the Pre-Emptive Futures of Chinese Grandparent Migrants in Australia' (American Behavioral Scientist, 2022, with L. Baldassar and R. Wilding); 'Descending asymmetry in proximate, mobile and digital care: Chinese older people grandparenting across distance within China and overseas' (American Sociological Review, 2025, with R. Murphy, Y. Huang, and L. Baldassar); 'Hukou, Socio-Spatial Class, And The Strategic Citizenship Practices Of Chinese Labour Migrants In Australia' (Citizenship Studies, 2023); and 'A spatial and organisational analysis of Asian panethnic association in Perth, Western Australia' (International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2018). Her work appears in high-impact journals and contributes to policy discussions on migrant care workers and elder abuse prevention. Stevens has received prestigious awards, including the ARC DECRA (2026), ECU Research Excellence Early Career Researcher Award (2025), ECU Vice Chancellor's Research Fellowship (2024), Jean Martin Award for Best PhD Thesis in Sociology (TASA, 2021), Forrest Prospect Fellowship (2021), runner-up Chinese Studies Association of Australia Thesis Prize (2021), and UWA Higher Degree by Research Achievement Prize (Qualitative, 2019). She is a member of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and International Sociological Association (ISA).