How to refer to me

Hi, I’m Claudine Chionh. My pronouns are she/her/hers. My family name is pronounced (from the Hokkien) /t͡ɕiɔŋ⁵³/ (“Chiong”) but I’ll answer to anything that comes close. “Chionh” is a bad romanisation of Jiǎng (蒋) – family lore says that the misspelling was introduced by a British colonial clerk.

About me

When I was a child I sometimes made my own library cards and envelopes to stick in my own books. My first media appearance was at the age of six when my freelance-journalist mother wrote about my reading habits and book collection as inspiration for a national children-should-read-more-books campaign in Singapore. I got my first home computer and wrote my first programs at the age of ten or thereabouts, in the 1980s. And I started (but did not finish) a computer science degree in 1994 at the dawn of Web 1.0.

I worked “in tech” for about fifteen years but in 2019 I was looking for more balance between technology and the humanities and between work and “life”. I retrained in Information Management during the world’s longest lockdowns and now work for the Australian Queer Archives as I explore what a midlife GLAMRous career change might look like. I’m still wrangling spreadsheets at work but I appreciate not having my entire work day occupied with technology problems. It’s even enabled me to rediscover the fun of programming as a hobby.

I live and work on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Yalukit-willam (Boonwurrung) peoples in what is commonly known as Melbourne, Australia. If you’re in the same part of the world, you can learn more about identifying traditional owners and view a general map on the AIATSIS website.

About this site

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