Rate My Professor Frances Steel

Associate Professor Frances Steel serves as Head of the History Programme in the School of Arts within the Humanities Division at the University of Otago. She earned her PhD in History from the Australian National University in 2008, a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (History) from the University of Otago in 2003, and a Bachelor of Arts (History) from the University of Otago in 1999. Her academic career began at the University of Otago as a Teaching Fellow in 2007 and Lecturer in 2008. She then held positions at the University of Wollongong, progressing from Lecturer (2009-2012) to Senior Lecturer (2013-2018) and Associate Professor (2019-2020). In 2021, she returned to the University of Otago as Senior Lecturer, advancing to her current role as Associate Professor. Steel teaches courses such as HIST 206 (Introduction to the Pacific World), HIST 318 (Australia since 1788: Boundaries of Belonging), and contributes to HIST 107, HIST 123, and HIST 353.

Steel's research centres on the history of the Pacific world, with particular emphasis on colonial networks, oceanic mobilities, transnational labour cultures, maritime history, labour history, and commodity histories including food and consumption cultures. Her current projects include a book on British and American imperialisms in the Pacific via transpacific steamship and aviation routes, and an examination of refrigeration's role in colonial food trades across the Pacific. Key publications encompass her monograph Oceania under Steam: Sea Transport and the Cultures of Colonialism, c.1870–1914 (Manchester University Press, 2011), co-authored Colonialism and Male Domestic Service across the Asia Pacific (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), and edited New Zealand and the Sea: Historical Perspectives (Bridget Williams Books, 2018). Notable recent articles are 'Beyond the Urban Kitchen: Refrigeration and Domesticity across Australia and the Pacific Islands, 1920s-1940s' (Journal of Social History, 2025) and 'Waitresses at Sea: Gender, Race and Service Labour on Ocean Liners, c.1930s-1960s' (Women’s History Review, 2021). She has secured research grants from the Australian Research Council and the National Library of Australia. Awards include the 2019 Marian Quartly Prize for an article in History Australia and runner-up for the Non-Fiction Prize in the 2019 New Zealand Heritage Book Awards for New Zealand and the Sea. Steel contributes to editorial boards of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, Journal of Pacific History, and The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History.