Nicole Vaughan

Nicole Vaughan is a PhD student in the Department of History. Her research centres on Hong Kong history and the Chinese diaspora, mainly in the United States, and she is interested in the intersections of space and the senses.

Her PhD thesis examines nuisance as it was perceived, conceptualised, and discussed in relation to Chinese communities in Hong Kong and San Francisco in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nuisance in both its legal and common usages played an important role in the production of race and the way it was inscribed on space in both cities, and through examination of legislation, legal proceedings, and public discourse in local newspapers and travel writing, this thesis explores these processes.