Lorraine Sim

Lorraine Sim is Associate Professor in Modern English Literature in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and a member of the Writing and Society Research Centre. Her research interests and expertise include modernism and modernity, early twentieth-century literature and photography, cultural histories of happiness, theories of the everyday, feminist studies, and the intersections between literature and philosophy. 

She is the author of two monographs – Ordinary Matters: Modernist Women’s Literature and Photography (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Virginia Woolf: the Patterns of Ordinary Experience (Ashgate, 2010). Her research has been widely published in journals including Modernism/modernity, Photography and Culture, Modernist Cultures, Journal of Modern Literature, Women’s Studies and Australian Feminist Studies. Lorraine is currently writing her third book, Happy Modernisms, which provides the first critical and cultural study of happiness in modernist literature and art. 

In 2009, Lorraine co-founded the Australasian Modernist Studies Network  and, following several terms as the AMSN Chair, she currently serves on the Network’s National Advisory Board. She serves on the Australian University Heads of English Research Committee and sits on the Editorial Boards of the journals Feminist Modernist Studies, Australian Feminist Studies, and Affirmations: of the Modern.

Lorraine holds a PhD in English Literature and a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) in Literature and Philosophy from The University of Western Australia. Prior to joining Western Sydney University in 2011, she held lectureships at the University of Ballarat (2006-2010) and The University of Western Australia (2004-2005).