54 It Fucked Me Up

In this raw and intimate episode, historian Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson spills the tea on the psychological rollercoaster of archival research: it offered the ‘biggest high’ and also ‘fucked [her] up’. From her formative childhood experiences in Beijing, to stumbling upon a human tooth in a Queensland court file, to reckoning with the human face of anti-Chinese racism, Sophie walks us through the time capsules of human drama she uses to tell the stories of Chinese Australia. What does a former market garden reveal about Chinese and First Nations cooperation? How could language be a technology of resistance for racialised migrants? And why did her ex’s probate records provide a lightbulb moment about migration?

You can listen to 54 It Fucked Me Up online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

54 It Fucked Me Up is an episode from Archive Fever by Clare Wright and Yves Rees.

This episode is 52:46 long.

This episode was published on Dec 4, 2025.

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