Christine de Matos

Christine de Matos is an historian and writer who specialises in the Australian role in the Allied Occupation of Japan (1946-1952), in particular using gender, race and class to elucidate the power dynamics of the occupier-occupied relationship. She is also interested in the ways the past can be performed through contemporary dance and ballet. She has previously been a Japan Foundation Fellow (2004) and in 2023 was awarded the Ann Moyal Essay Prize.

Christine has published widely on Australia and the Allied Occupation, including her book Imposing Peace and Prosperity: Australia, Social Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan 1945-1949 (ASP, 2008). Her most recent book publication is Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied, coedited with Mark E. Caprio and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015, and most recent article ‘Becoming the Occupier: Power Reversals in the Asia-Pacific War and in Australian-Occupied Japan ' with Cara Cross in a special issue of The International History Review (2026).