Lizzie Oliver

I work predominantly with archival materials from the Second World War, in particular those related to the experiences of prisoners of war (POWs), Asian forced labourers and civilian internees across the Far East, 1941 – 1945.

My PhD was funded by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA), based at the University of Leeds and the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London. I looked at the narratives of former prisoners of war (POWs) who laboured on the Sumatra railway 1944 – 1945 – and the post-war responses of families to the history of this captivity. That project included compiling a nominal roll of British former POWs on the Sumatra railway, which is available at: www.sumatrarailway.com.

Since completing my PhD I have brought my interests together through work comparing the narratives of former POWs with the film and fiction emerging from Southeast Asia during the Second World War.

In Autumn 2014 I was Brotherton Fellow at Leeds Humanities Research Institute (LHRI), and currently, I am an LHRI/Wellcome Trust postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Leeds.