ABOUT

Dr Yves Rees (they/them) is a writer, historian and podcaster based in Naarm/Melbourne. A settler with Welsh, English and Norwegian heritage, they live and work on unceded Wurundjeri land. Yves is a Senior Lecturer in History at La Trobe University in Naarm/Melbourne, and co-host of Archive Fever podcast, and author of Travelling to Tomorrow: the modern women who sparked Australia’s romance with America (NewSouth, 2024).

Yves was the recipient of the 2020 Calibre Essay Prize, awarded for their essay ‘Reading the Mess Backwards’. Their memoir All About Yves: Notes from a Transition was published by Allen & Unwin in 2021. Alongside Bobuq Sayed, Sam Elkin and Alex Gallagher, Yves is co-editor of the anthology Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2022).

Yves was a David Myers Research Fellow in History at La Trobe University (2017-20) and a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Junior Research Fellow in the Laureate Research Program in International History at the University of Sydney (2016). Yves holds a PhD in History from the Australian National University and an MA in History from University College London, and has been a Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Yves has received the Serle Award for Best Postgraduate Thesis in Australian History, the Ken Inglis Prize, an Endeavour Research Fellowship, the ANU Gender Institute Research Excellence Award, a La Trobe ECR Research Excellence Award, and was a finalist for the 2019 CHASS Future Leader Award. They were awarded a 2021 Varuna Residential Fellow and will be the 2025 KSP Writers’ Centre Emerging Writer-in-Residence. They were highly commended for the 2025 Whitlam Essay Residency.

Yves is a frequent contributor to ABC radio, and in 2020-21 had a regular segment on ABC Melbourne Afternoons called ‘Missing Monuments’. Yves has appeared on ABC TV’s The Drum and Queerstralia, as well as Channel 10’s The Project. Their writing has featured in Guardian Australia, The Age, Overland, Meanjin, Inside Story, the Griffith Review, the Sydney Review of Books, ABC Online, Archer, Junkee, The Conversation, Crikey, Refinery29, Kill Your Darlings, 9Honey, BroadAgenda, HerCanberra and the Australian Book Review.

Yves has published widely across Australian gender, transnational and economic history. At present, Yves is working on a history of Australian drag. Yves is the co-editor of Transnationalism, Nationalism and Australian History (Palgrave, 2017) and their research has been published in Australian and international journals, including Gender & History, Journal of Global History, Pacific Historical Review, Australian Historical Studies, History Australia, Journal of Australian Studies, History Compass and Australian Feminist Studies.

At present, Yves sits on the Board of the History Council of Victoria, the Editorial Board of Journal of Australian Studies, and the Griffith Review Editorial Advisory Board. In 2024-26, Yves co-edits History Australia, the official journal of the Australian Historical Association. They are also a member of the National Advisory Committee of A Monument of One’s Own, and the Women's Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and sit on the Nominations Committee for the Paragraph Fellowship. Yves has judged the 2021 and 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the 2023 Calibre Essay Prize, and the 2024 Stella Prize. They will be a Mentor for Kill Your Darlings in 2025.

Yves has appeared at a range of festivals including Sydney Writers’ Festival, Adelaide Writers’ Week, Melbourne Writers Festival, Newcastle Writers Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Byron Writers Festival, Write Around the Murray, Bendigo Writers Festival, Canberra Writers Festival and the Port Fairy Literary Weekend. In 2021, Yves co-curated and hosted a sold-out event on ‘Beyond the Binary’ for All About Women festival at the Sydney Opera House. Yves has also contributed to writing workshops for Writers SA, Byron Writers Festival and Varuna: The National Writers’ House.

Yves is trans and uses they/them pronouns. They write on transgender history and politics. Alongside Sam Elkin, Yves is the co-founder of Spilling the T trans writing collective, which was a finalist for Artist of the Year at the 2021 Globe Awards. Sam and Yves guest co-edited Bent Street 5.1 — Hard Borders, Soft Edges, published in June 2021.

When not reading or writing, Yves enjoys running, hiking and ocean swimming.