Short Story

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

On 5 September 2025, I was awarded second prize in the adult category of the Melton City Libraries Short Story Competition. The competition received over 300 entries. My story, ‘The Foreboding,’ is a speculative fiction set in the near future:

An onyx ring has appeared on the outer corners of Dalia Quispe’s eye. As the darkness spreads, Dalia must fight her job’s human resources automated system to seek medical treatment. Meanwhile, her work threatens to drain more than her sight.

The competition judge was the imitable Alice Pung OAM. It is a profound honour to receive Alice’s feedback. Her books about Chinese Cambodian women in the Western suburbs of Naarm, Melbourne, have been nourishing and inspiring. (Alice signed my copy of Unpolished Gem!) My work similarly focuses on migrant women of colour from working class backgrounds, on the west of Wurundjeri Country. I explore alternate futures of family, work, and the environment. Below is part of Alice’s comments about my story.

‘I loved this story for its slight speculative fiction bent, its inventiveness. I admire how it builds an alternate world that is just convincing enough to seem real, but that has a few details that are off-kilter enough to unsettle the reader. The premise is so ambitious, yet the subtlety and attention to detail is there, saving it from becoming an outlandish Black Mirror episode to a disquieting and powerful satire on work culture.’

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Working on Social Change

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos
Paste-up drawing on a wall, showing two women. One woman is sitting and holds an electric drill. The other woman stands and holds scales of justice

Happy New Year! Today I summarise my major projects for the past year, covering public health, vocational training, disability, technology, and gender equity.

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The Pandemic Reader

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos
Sticker on the window of a train, says: Please wear a mask on public transport

My work on ‘Pandemic, Race and` Moral Panic’ has been published in a new book, ‘The Pandemic Reader: Exposing Social (In)justice in the Time of COVID-19.’ Edited by Assistant Professor Mako Fitts Ward, Professor Jennifer A. Sandlin, Michelle McGibbney Vlahoulis, and Dr Christine L. Holman, the book explores the social and political impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Pandemic Reader offers critical perspectives on the sweeping injustices intensified by COVID-19 and the resurgence of racialised state violence. It offers context, data, viewpoints and solutions to collectively teach, learn, and thrive. It takes up abolitionist teaching methodologies—focusing not only on the many ways the pandemic has exacerbated injustice, but also on how individuals and communities are healing, expressing vulnerability, and building community—to amplify intersectional racial justice strategies across learning spaces. This collection is a pedagogical intervention to locate how individuals and communities propel us forward through the multiple pandemics of 2020.”

Read more here.

Media Representations of Race and the Pandemic

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

Published on Seattle Star

In Episode 3 of Race in Society (video below), Associate Professor Alana Lentin and I lead a panel about how mainstream media create sensationalist accounts of the pandemic, and the proactive ways in which Aboriginal people and Asian people in particular lead their own responses. We spoke with Dr Summer May Finlay, a Yorta Yorta woman and Public Health Researcher at the Universities of Wollongong and Canberra. In our video below, she details how Aboriginal community controlled health organisations have effectively dealt with COVID-19 using social marketing campaigns. We also chatted with Dr Karen Schamberger, an independent curator and historian. She covers the history of Australian sinophobia (the fear of China, its people and or its culture), and how anti-Chinese racism plays out in media reports on racism and the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue remains pertinent, given that the suburbs currently under strict lockdown in Sydney have relatively large Asian populations.

Even though we filmed this discussion 10 months ago, the commentary illuminates the current COVID-19 crisis.

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Interview: Pandemic Misinformation

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

I spoke with Angeline Chew Longshore from The Mauimama about my article, “Using sociology to think critically about Coronavirus COVID-19 studies.” We talked about how I was motivated to write about the sociology of science because I saw so many people struggling to make sense of the pandemic. We discussed how national cultures are impacting responses to the virus, why precarious employment in healthcare is causing high rates of infection, and how we can better check whether the information we hear is credible.

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Interview: Moral Panic

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

The past of the month has proved especially busy. I’ve done a few media interviews and launched a new webseries with Associate Professor Alana Letin, called Race in Society. More on these projects in the coming days. Today, I look back on my interview with 3CR Diaspora Blues about my article, Pandemic, race and moral panic. Listen below, with a transcription for accessibility further down.

3RC Diaspora Blues Moral Panic with Dr Zuleyka Zevallos
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Virus, community, activism

Posted on by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos
Oil painting image of protesters at a Black Lives Matter Protest in Sydney. They are wearing surgical masks during the COVID-19 pandemic

Since I last wrote you, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has obviously transformed the world. I went into voluntary lockdown in early March, and Australia went into official lockdown at the end of March. I’ve been writing a lot on the pandemic on my social media, especially on Twitter and on Facebook and Instagram stories, as well as on my research blog.

Today, from 2.30pm-3pm AEST, you’ll be able to hear about some of this work on COVID-19. I did an interview with Bigoa and Baasto on 3CR Diaspora Blues about my research on Pandemic, race and moral panic. Below is a preview of the interview.

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