AustLit

Stig Hokanson arrived in Australia in 1966 and soon afterwards found employment in the advertising department of Sydney television station, Channel 10. The following year he moved to Brisbane and secured a position with the Courier Mail. When Queensland Newspapers was acquired by Rupert Murdoch in 1982 Hokanson left the industry to pursue an academic career. He was awarded a B.A. (Hons) from Griffith University and later taught there as well as at The Queensland University of Technology. His 1987 dissertation, 'Arrival, Acceptance and Abolition - Indentured Labour in the Queensland Sugar Industry 1863-1913' examines an important period of labour relations in Colonial Queensland and its immediate aftermath.

In 1988 Hokanson completed post-graduate degree studies in Education at The University of Queensland and went on to teach English and History at several Brisbane high schools before switching to primary teaching and eventually Special Education. He retired in 2005.

A Freemason since 1971, Hokanson has written short biographical articles about prominent former members of his Brisbane Lodge for its newsletter Thespian TImes. Between 1994 and 1999 he edited Queensländeren for Brisbane's Swedes Down Under Club (1989-), and in the mid-1990s collaborated with Eileen B. Johnson, John Stanley Martin on One Way Passage: Swedish Migrants to Australia in the James Sanderson Archive (1996).

A regular editorial contributor and feature writer for Thespian Times, the Queensland Freemason and assorted historical journals and periodicals, Hokanson began contributing biographies to the Australian Variety Theatre Archive in 2013 and soon afterwards established his own website.

Hokanson is also a registered civil marriage and funeral celebrant, and a long time member of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland.