Lucy Fraser

Dr. Lucy Fraser is a Senior Lecturer in Japanese at the School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland, St Lucia campus. She earned her PhD from The University of Queensland in 2013 for her thesis 'Fairy tale transformations and gender: The Little Mermaid's metamorphoses in Japanese and English.' Her research interests include depictions of animal-human relationships in fiction, fairy tales and fairy tale retellings in Japanese and English, ideas of gender—especially the figure of the girl—in contemporary Japanese literature, manga, film, and television, Japan-Australia literary and cultural connections, editing, and translation of literature and literary criticism. She teaches Japanese language and literature and is involved in projects such as BORDERS (2023).

In her academic career, Fraser has produced significant scholarly work, including the book 'The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of "The Little Mermaid"' (Wayne State University Press, 2017). She co-edited 'The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture' (2020) and authored chapters like 'Women and the non-human animal: rewriting the canine classic' (2022) and 'Japanese sleeping beauties abroad: Australian retellings of Kawabata Yasunari’s fairy-tale novella' (2020). Key journal articles encompass 'Dogs, gods, and monsters: the animal–human connection in Bakin’s Hakkenden, Folktales and Legends, and two contemporary retellings' (Japanese Studies, 2018), which won her the 13th Inoue Yasushi Award for Outstanding Research in Japanese Literature, Culture and Art in Australia and New Zealand (2019), and 'A hood is not a hat: on translating fairy-tale fashion' (2024). Her translations include 'The Riding Hood Club' by Ogawa Yōko (2024) and 'Tōkina-to: The Story of the Owl God’s Little Sister' by Yuko Tsushima (2020, co-translator). Fraser supervises higher degree by research students on Japanese literature topics and contributes to understanding cultural impacts of fiction on gender and animal representations.

Professional Email: l.fraser2@uq.edu.au