Jini Kim Watson

Jini Kim Watson is Associate Professor in Postcolonial and Transpacific Literatures in the School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University, a B.A. in English (Hons I) from the University of Queensland, and a Bachelor of Planning & Design in Architecture from the University of Melbourne. With training in several Asian languages and a background in architecture, her interdisciplinary approach integrates spatial theory, Marxism, and political economy into literary studies. Prior to her current position, Watson was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University, affiliated with the Departments of Comparative Literature and Social and Cultural Analysis, as well as NYU Sydney. She has held visiting fellowships at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Committee on Globalization and Social Change and previously at the University of Melbourne.

Watson's research focuses on postcolonial literature and theory, decolonization and the global Cold War in Asia, urban humanities, transpacific migration, and critical theory. She authored The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham University Press, 2021), the latter receiving an Honorable Mention for the American Comparative Literature Association’s René Wellek Prize (2022) and the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize (2021). Her edited volumes include The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present (Fordham University Press, 2018, co-edited with Gary Wilder), The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2023, co-edited with Ato Quayson), and the forthcoming Ends of the Global City: Disaffection, Displacement, and the New Cultural Ecologies of the Urban (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025, co-edited with Rashmi Varma). Key articles feature in journals such as Interventions, Contemporary Literature, Discourse, and Positions. At the University of Melbourne, she coordinates courses like Literature and the City (ENGL20037) and Literature, Adaptation, Media (ENGL20031), and participates in the History, Memory and Decolonial Futures Research Collective. Her work has shaped understandings of authoritarianism, urban form, and political modernity in postcolonial Asia.

Professional Email: jini.watson@unimelb.edu.au