Australian Dictionary of Biography

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Cultural Advice

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website contains names, images, and voices of deceased persons.

In addition, some articles contain terms or views that were acceptable within mainstream Australian culture in the period in which they were written, but may no longer be considered appropriate.

These articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Australian National University.

Older articles are being reviewed with a view to bringing them into line with contemporary values but the original text will remain available for historical context.

ADB Editorial Board

The Editorial Board is responsible for the management and scholarly direction of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Its members are drawn from university history departments in Canberra and the State capitals.

Current members

Tom Griffiths (chair)
Odette Best
Chris Cunneen
Mark Dunn
Raelene Frances  
Deborah Gare
Stephen Garton
Geoffrey A.C. Ginn 
Bridget Griffen-Foley
Kristyn Harman  
Karl James
Catherine Kevin
Stephen Kinnane  
Shino Konishi
David Lee  
Mark McKenna
Melanie Oppenheimer
Carolyn Rasmussen
Elizabeth Rushen
Katerina Teaiwa


Tom Griffiths (Australian Capital Territory, Chair of the Board, continuing)
December 2021 – December 2026 

Professor Tom Griffiths, BA (Hons) (University of Melbourne), PhD (Monash University), is Emeritus Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University and was foundation director of the Centre for Environmental History. In 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities; from 2011 to 2018 he held the William Keith Hancock Chair of History at the ANU and in 2014 he was appointed an AO for “distinguished service to tertiary education, particularly social, cultural and environmental history, and through popular and academic contributions to Australian literature”. 

His research, writing and teaching interests are in the fields of Australian social, cultural and environmental history, the comparative environmental history of settler societies, the writing of non-fiction, and the history of Antarctica. Tom’s books and essays have won prizes in history, science, literature, politics and journalism and include Hunters and Collectors: the Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (1996), Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (2001) and Living with Fire (2012, with Christine Hansen). His book, Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (2007), won the Queensland and NSW Premiers’ awards for Non-Fiction and was the joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. His most recent work The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft (2016) won the Ernest Scott Prize for History and the ACT Book of the Year award. 

Tom chaired the ADB’s Commonwealth Working Party between July 1999 and December 2004 and has been chair of the Editorial Board since 2006. He has written four entries for the ADB.

 

Odette Best (Indigenous, continuing) 
December 2021 – December 2026 

Professor Odette Best, RN (PAH), BHlthSc (Sydney), MPhil (Griffith) and PhD (USQ), is a Professor in Nursing and Associate Head Indigenous Research and Community Engagement in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health at the University of Southern Queensland, Ipswich Campus.    

Odette has had a long and distinguished career as a registered nurse, an academic and an historian of Aboriginal nurses and midwives. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2002 and an International Council of Nursing Fellowship in 2009. In 2012, she became the first Indigenous person to graduate from USQ with a Doctorate in Nursing. She was awarded the 2016 USQ Indigenous Service Alumnus of the Year. Odette is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN), the Australian College of Nurses (FACN) and the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives.  

She works on the provision of better health practice as well as researching into the history of Aboriginal nurses and midwives in order to make a significant difference to nursing students’ understanding of Indigenous health issues and practice. Her PhD research, titled Yatdjuligin: The Stories of Queensland Aboriginal Nurses 1950-2005, explored the journey of six Aboriginal registered nurses across six decades. Odette currently is an ARC recipient with research titled: Historiography of Aboriginal nurses and midwives in Queensland 1890-1950.  

Odette became chair of the Indigenous Working Party in 2016. 

  

Chris Cunneen (New South Wales, continuing)
December 2021 – December 2026

Dr Christopher Cunneen, BA Hons (University of Newcastle), MA (University of London), PhD (Australian National University), was a research fellow (1974-82) and deputy general editor (1982-96) of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. In 1996 he was appointed research fellow in the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University. 

Chris’s publications include William John McKell: Boilermaker, Premier, Governor General (2000); The New South Wales State Election 1944 (1999); and King’s Men: Australia’s Governors-General from Hopetoun to Isaacs (1983). 

In 2001-05 he was project manager and editor of the ADB’s Supplementary Volume and in 2005-09 project coordinator of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. He has been a member of the ADB’s NSW working party since 1975. Chris was invited to join the Editorial Board in June 2011. 

In 2015, he was awarded an ADB Medal for long and distinguished service. He has been closely involved in the revision of entries in volumes one and two (the period before 1850 which we will be revising next) and is currently working on the Biographical Register of the Australian Labour Movement (BRALM) 2000 entries that we were gifted and which he is adding to. Chris has written 82 ADB entries and is on our author's roll of honour.

 

Mark Dunn (New South Wales, new)  
December 2021 – December 2026    

Dr Mark Dunn, BA and PhD (University of New South Wales), is the former chair of the Professional Historians Association of NSW and ACT, President of the History Council NSW and Deputy Chair of the Heritage Council of NSW.    

Mark was the historian for a heritage and archaeology firm in Sydney for 15 years involved in major conservation, archaeology (including digging), oral history, significance and interpretation projects Australia wide. More recently he has been a consultant historian in NSW heritage and research, as well as developing and leading Sydney city tours for an American tour company Context Travel. From 2010 to mid-2012 he was Dictionary of Sydney writer-in-residence sponsored by the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts.  In 2016 Mark was the C.H. Currey Fellow at the State Library of NSW researching, Civilised or Savage: the colonial legacy of Robert and Helenus Scott considering their complex and conflicting relationships with Aboriginal people across the Hunter Valley area in consultation with the Wonnarua Nation Aboriginal Corporation and the Wollotuka Institute at the University of Newcastle.  

Mark's publications include, most recently, Convict Valley: The Bloody Struggle on Australia's Early Frontier (2020), which bears on the planned revisions of the ADB. Mark has been a member of the NSW working party and the ADB revision group since 2017. He is the author of the ADB entry on Sydney architect Donald Crone.

 

Raelene Frances (ACT, new)
December 2021 – December 2026   

Professor Raelene Frances, MA (University of Western Australia), PhD (Monash University), began her career as lecturer at the University of Western Australia and has held academic positions at Murdoch University, University of Auckland, University of New South Wales and Monash University. She was Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Monash University (2007-2017) and has been Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU since 2017. 

Rae has held a range of leadership roles. She was a council member of the National Museum of Australia and board member of the Council for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. She was Federal President, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (2003 to 2007). 

Rae’s research interests include labour history, women's and gender history, and Australian social and cultural history, including interaction between Australian Indigenous communities and European settlers. She has been awarded a number of prizes for her publications in these areas, including the Australian Historical Association’s Hancock Prize and the New South Wales Premier’s History Prize. The Politics of Work. Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880-1939 (1993), won the Hancock Prize awarded by the Australian Historical Association, and Selling Sex: A History of Prostitution (2007) was shortlisted for the Ernest Scott History Prize. She co-authored Women and the Great War with Bruce Scates which won the New South Wales Premier’s Children’s History Prize in 1998 in 2015. Rae received the Labour History Prize for the best article in the journal, Labour History, in the two years 2013-14, for ‘Authentic Leaders: Women and Leadership in Australian Unions before World War II’. 

She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) in 2011, and appointed Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2020 for “significant service to history studies as a teacher, researcher and author”. 

Rae has written five ADB articles, previously served ex officio on the ADB Editorial Board, but it is proposed she serve now as a member, given that she retires from her role as Dean in 2022. 

 

Deborah Gare (Western Australia, new)  
December 2021– December 2026     

Professor Deborah Gare PhD (University of Western Australia) is a Professor of History and Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at The University of Notre Dame Australia.  In January 2021, Deborah will commence a new role as Head of Social Sciences and Arts, and Professor of History, at Murdoch University. 

Deborah has previously held other positions, including Research Associate at Curtin University, a Visiting Fellow of the University of British Columbia, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Manchester.  

She has researched Western Australian history intensively, publishing with Madison Lloyd-Jones When War Came to Fremantle: 1899 – 1945 (2014) and, edited with David Ritter, Making Australian History: The politics of the past since 1788 (2008).  She has edited several special editions of Studies in Western Australian History, including Fremantle: Empire, faith and conflict since 1829 (edited with Shane Burke, 2016) and Tom Stannage: History from the other side (edited with Jenny Gregory, 2015).  Her engagement in biographical work includes international research on Mary Ann Friend (1800 – 1839), an artist and writer who visited the Swan River Colony in 1830.    

Deborah has taken several leadership roles in the Humanities and Social Sciences. She was the inaugural co-chair of the Deans Council (DASSH) Associate Deans’ Network of Learning and Teaching in Australia and New Zealand; she represented DASSH in the ALTC project which developed graduate standards for the discipline of History; and she is a long-serving Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Notre Dame. She is currently President of the History Council of West Australia.   

Deborah has been a member of the ADB’s WA Working party since 2013. She took up the role of Chair of the working party at the end of 2021, and she has written an entry for the ADB

 

Stephen Garton (New South Wales, continuing)
December 2021 – December 2026
 
Professor Stephen Garton, BA (University of Sydney), PhD (University of New South Wales), began his career as a teaching fellow in the School of Humanities at Griffith University before returning to the University of Sydney in 1988 as a lecturer in the Department of History. During the next 13 years he took on leadership positions including Head of the Department and Challis Chair in History, before becoming Dean in 2001. He was appointed Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (2009-2019), and recently resumed his role as Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor after serving as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Sydney (2020-2021).  

Stephen is the author or co-author of seven books and over 100 articles, chapters, and encyclopaedia and historical dictionary entries in such areas as the history of madness, psychiatry, crime, incarceration, masculinity, eugenics, social policy, poverty, returned soldiers, and sexuality, including 20 entries for the ADB. As well as serving on the NSW Working Party since December 1989 he was closely associated with the ongoing Dictionary of Sydney project. His many honours include Fellowships of the Australian Academy of Humanities, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Royal Australian Historical Society and the Royal Society of NSW. In 2001 he was awarded a Commonwealth Centenary Medal for services to History and in 2020 was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to tertiary education administration and to History.  

Stephen was an Associate Editor of the ADB’s Supplementary Volume (2005) of missing persons, has written twenty entries for the ADB and has served on the ADB’s Editorial Board since May 1999.

 

Geoffrey A. C. Ginn (Queensland, ongoing) 
December 2021 – December 2026  

Associate Professor Geoffrey A.C. Ginn holds a BA (Hons) and PhD (University of Queensland). He is a former heritage consultant. He was a Chevening Scholar to the UK (1995-1996) and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London (2014). Since 2002 he has taught History at the University of Queensland and is currently the History program convenor.  

Geoff’s publications include the biography Archangels & Archaeology: J.S.M. Ward’s Kingdom of the Wise (2012) and Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London (2017). He is currently researching a monograph on the intimate politics of the Edwardian ‘New Liberals’ based on biographical case studies. He is co-editor of the Australian Journal of Politics and History, and an Associate Editor (History) of the new international journal Global Nineteenth Century Studies. With UQ’s Emeritus Professor Peter Spearritt, Geoff has overseen the development of UQ’s ‘Digital Histories, Cultures and Landscapes’ initiative, which comprises four open access public reference websites: the Queensland Historical Atlas, Queensland Places, Queensland Speaks and Text Queensland. He currently holds an ARC Linkage project grant (2019-22) to develop a Queensland Atlas of Religion in partnership with the State Library of Queensland. 

As an active public historian Geoff has served on the Board of the State Library of Queensland (2005-2008), the Queensland Museum (2008-2013, 2017-present), as a member of the Board of the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology, and as a judge in the Queensland Literary Awards.   

Geoff has been a member of the ADB’s Queensland Working Party since 2008, and has written one ADB article on the Queensland journalist and popular historian Hector Holthouse.

 

Bridget Griffen-Foley (NSW, ongoing)
December 2021 – December 2026 

Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley was awarded a University Medal for Modern History in 1992, and holds a BA and a PhD in Modern History from Macquarie University. She held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Sydney before returning to Macquarie in 2003, where she took up an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship in the Department of Modern History and Politics. She became founding Director of the Centre for Media History in 2007 and Professor of Media in 2013, and was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2014. She is now Director of Research and Innovation in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature at Macquarie, and heads the Cultural and Communications Studies section of the  Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Bridget specialises in the history of the media, particularly the Australian media. Her publications include The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire (1999), Sir Frank Packer (2000), Party Games: Australian Politicians and the Media from War to Dismissal (2003), Changing Stations: The story of Australian Commercial Radio (2009), and Australian Radio Listeners and Television Viewers: Historical Perspectives (2020). She edited A Companion to the Australian Media in 2014, serves of the Sounds of Australia expert industry panel for the National Film and Sound Archive, and is a selector for the Australian Media Hall of Fame. 

She has been a member of the ADB’s NSW Working Party since 2000 and has written sixteen entries for the ADB, and has served on the ADB’s Editorial Board since 2017.

 

Kristyn Harman (Tasmanian, new)
December 2021-December 2026 

Associate Professor Kristyn Harman BA (Hons.) and PhD (University of Tasmania), lectured in Aboriginal Studies before joining History within the School of Humanities of the University of Tasmania. She has served as the Academic Director, Curriculum Innovation and Digital Engagement for the College of Arts, Law and Education and is currently the Deputy Chair of Academic Senate.  

Kristyn specialises in cross-cultural encounters across Britain's nineteenth-century. Her book Aboriginal Convicts. Australian, Khoisan and Māori Exiles (2013) was awarded the 2014 Australian Historical Association Kay Daniels award; and Cleansing the Colony: Transporting Convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land (2017), was longlisted in the Royal Society Te Aparangi Award for General Non-Fiction in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for 2018.  

Kristyn is a member of the Australian Historical Association, the Australian Women’s History Network, Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, Australia and New Zealand Criminology Network, the Convict Women’s Press, and the Female Convict Research Centre.  She is the incoming Chair of the ADB’s Tasmanian Working Party.  

 

Karl James (ACT, new) 
December 2021 – December 2026  

Dr Karl James PhD (University of Wollongong) has worked as an historian at the Australian War Memorial since 2006 and is currently the Head of the Military History Section. He has been a Departmental Visitor with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU.  

Karl’s research focuses on Australia’s involvement in the Second World War. His publications include The Hard Slog: Australians in the Bougainville Campaign, 1944–45 (2012), Double Diamonds: Australian Commandos in the Pacific War, 1941–45 (2016) and an edited collection Kokoda: Beyond the Legend (2017). He has worked on major exhibitions at the Memorial, including as lead curator for From the Shadows: Australia’s Special Forces (2017–18), the special anniversary exhibition The Rats of Tobruk, 1941 (2011), and the refurbishment of the permanent Second World War Galleries (2010). He is currently working with Professor Peter J. Dean on the edited volume Australia in the Second World War: On campaign and the Home Front (to be published in 2022 by Brécourt Academic and the University Press of Kentucky). He is researching a new history of the 1941 siege of Tobruk during the Second World War.   

Karl is a member of the editorial staff for the Memorial’s magazine Wartime. In 2021 Dr James became co-chair of the Armed Services working group for the ADB.

 

Catherine Kevin (South Australia, ongoing)  
December 2021 – December 2026  

Catherine Kevin, BA (Hons.) and PhD (Sydney University), held positions at SBS Television and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College, University of London, before joining Flinders University in 2007 where she is currently Associate Professor in Australian history in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.      

Catherine specialises in feminist histories and is currently lead Chief Investigator on an ARC-funded project: The History of Domestic Violence in Australia 1850-2020. She has published widely on the history of the reproductive body and maternal loss including among migrant women, gendered violence, race relations in Australia and their cinematic representations. Her doctoral work was on ‘A genealogy of pregnancy in medicine and the law: Australia, 1945-2000’, from which she published a number of articles. She is the editor of Feminism and the Body: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2009), as well as a number of journal special issues and the author of Dispossession and the Making of ‘Jedda’. Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country (2020). 

Catherine was an editor of History Australia (2015-2018), is the South Australian representative for the Australian Women’s History Network, and began section editing South Australian articles in 2015.She has written two ADB articles. She is a member of the newly formed Women’s Working Party which is advising the ADB over the representation of women in the Dictionary, especially as we are moving towards revising entries published in volumes 1 and 2.

 

Steve Kinnane (Western Australia, ongoing) 
December 2021 – December 2026 

Steve is a Marda Marda researcher and writer from Miriwoong country in the East Kimberley. He holds a BA Hons. (Murdoch) and is currently writing a PhD part-time at the ANU in the School of History. Steve is currently the Research Coordinator for the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC), and an Adjunct Research Fellow for the Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame (UNDA), Broome. Previous academic and research positions include lecturer in Sustainability and Indigenous Studies, at Murdoch University, Senior Researcher, Nulungu Research Institute, Curator Indigenous Exhibitions for the New Museum of Western Australia, and Research Fellow at AIATSIS.

In 1996 Steve co-wrote and produced The Coolbaroo Club, an award-winning ABC documentary. With Lauren Marsh and Alice Nannup, he co-authored When the Pelican Laughed in 1992 which was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Literary Award in 1993. His 2004 book, Shadow Lines,won many awards including the WA Premiers Award for Non-Fiction, and the Stanner Award. He has researched and published widely in the field of Indigenous history and community cultural heritage. Other publications include the chapter ‘Indigenous Australia’ (in collaboration with Anna Haebich) for the Cambridge History of Australia, the chapter ‘Blood History’ for the First Australians book accompanying the First Australians Television Series. Steve has held roles as a Deputy Chair of the AIATSIS Council, Chair of the AIATSIS Foundation, and has completed terms on the AIATSIS Research Advisory Committee and Aboriginal Studies Press Advisory Committee.  He is currently a Director of Magabala Books and a Member of the AIATSIS Foundation.  

Steve was an inaugural member of the ADB’s Indigenous Working Party in 2015 and in the same year he joined the Editorial Board. 

 

Shino Konishi (Western Australia, ongoing)
December 2021 – December 2026

Associate Professor Shino Konishi is Aboriginal and descends from the Yawuru people of Broome, WA.

Shino, BA (Hons.) and PhD (Sydney University), has held positions in Australian history and Indigenous studies at the University of Sydney, National Museum of Australia, Australian National University and the University of Western Australia. She is currently at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Melbourne Campus of the Australian Catholic University. 

Her research has focused in particular on the early interactions between Indigenous people and European explorers, and the way in which early European observations and representations of Indigenous Australian people, bodies and cultural practices continue to shape broader understandings of Aboriginal politics and society. Her book The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012) was short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Australian History Award, 2013. She has been the recipient of a number of grants including the ARC Discovery, ‘Exploring the Middle Ground: New Histories of Cross-Cultural Encounters in Australian Maritime and Land Exploration’, which led to the co-edited work with Maria Nugent and Tiffany Shellam, Indigenous Intermediaries. New perspectives on exploration archives (2015) and Brokers and boundaries. Colonial exploration in Indigenous territory (2016). She is a member of the National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network and was the editor of Aboriginal History (2010-2014). 

Shino joined the Editorial Board in 2015. She is leading the ARC funded project on the Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography with Malcolm Allbrook and Tom Griffiths, in collaboration with the ADB (2017-2022).  

 

David Lee (ACT, ongoing)
December 2021 – December 2026

Associate Professor David Lee, PhD (ANU), joined the University of New South Wales, Canberra, in 2019, having previously been Director of the Historical Publications and Research Unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs (1995-2019) and an Adjunct Professor in History at Deakin University.   

He researches and writes on twentieth century Australian history and international history. His publications include Australia and the World in the Twentieth Century (2005), Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist (2010) and The Second Rush: Mining and the Transformation of Australia (2016). He edited, with Wayne Reynolds, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy: Australia and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1945-1974 (2013) and, with James Cotton, Australia and the United Nations (2012). He is currently working on a collaborative research project about Sir John Crawford, with Professors Nicholas Brown, Stuart Macintyre and Frank Bongiorno.  

David has been a member of the Commonwealth Working Party since 2012 and became its chair in 2016. 

 

Mark McKenna (ACT, new)
December 2021 – December 2026

Professor Mark McKenna, BA (University of Sydney) and PhD (University of NSW), was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Research School of Social Sciences (ANU, 1997-2000) and an Australian Research Council QEII Fellow (ANU, 2001-2005). He subsequently held chairs of Australian History at Copenhagen University, Denmark (2006) and at University College, Dublin, Ireland (2011). He was an ARC Future Fellow at the University of Sydney (2012-2015), becoming Professor of History (2015-2021) and Chair of Department (2020), before retiring in April 2021.   

Mark was the co-winner of the Australian Historical Association’s W.K. Hancock Prize for Australian History in 1998. His wide-ranging scholarship has been award-winning, including Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: an Australian History of Place (2002), This Country: A Reconciled Republic? (2004), From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories (2016) and Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future (2018). His most famous work is An Eye for Eternity:The Life of Manning Clark (2011) which received many accolades including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Non-Fiction (2012), the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (2012), the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (2011), Non-Fiction Prize, Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards (2011), Non-Fiction Prize, Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (2012). It was shortlisted for many other awards. Mark’s most recent history, Return to Uluru (2021) is about the murder of an Aboriginal Australian at Uluru by a Northern Territory policeman in 1934 and how that event shaped the reimagining of Uluru as the ‘heart of the nation’.  

In 2021 Mark was appointed Honorary Professor in the NCB/ADB, School of History, ANU from 2021 to 2026. He has a general expertise in biography having written about biography as a literary form and genre, as well as being a prize-winning biographer. He wrote the ADB entry on Manning Clark.   

 

Melanie Oppenheimer (ACT, new)
December 2021 – December 2026

Professor Melanie Oppenheimer BA & Dip. Ed. (University of New England, Armidale) M. Litt (University of New England, Armidale), PhD (Macquarie University), has held positions in Australian History at the University of Western Sydney and the University of New England, before being appointed to the Chair of History at Flinders University (2013-2021). From July 2016 to June 2017, Melanie was Dean of the School of History and International Relations. She completed a three-year term as a member of the ARC College of Experts in 2018. She has been Visiting Chair in Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo (2018-9), and was awarded the 2021 National Library of Australia Fellowship to work on 'Imperial Power Couple: The Political and Personal Lives of Helen and Ronald Munro Ferguson'.  

Melanie’s publications include a centenary history of Australian Red Cross, The Power of Humanity (2014) and The Last Battle: Soldier Settlement in Australia, 1916-1939 (2016), which was co-authored with Bruce Scates. She has co-edited a number of books including (with Jeni Warburton) Volunteers & Volunteering (2000); (with Mandy Paul & Margaret Anderson) SA on the Eve of War (2017); and (with Erik Eklund & Joanne Scott) The State of Welfare (2018). She holds an ARC Discovery Grant, DP190101171 for 'Resilient Humanitarianism: The League of Red Cross Societies, 1919-1991' (2019-2023), and a Linkage Grant, LP200301043, 'Developing a National Volunteering Roadmap' (2021-2024). She is currently working on a biography of Helen and Ronald Munro Ferguson.  

Melanie was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2017 and was elected President of the Australian Historical Association for a two-year term (2020-22). She was appointed an Honorary Professor in the School of History at the ANU from March 2021.  She is a second-generation ADB author: her stepfather Bruce Mitchell wrote 28 ADB articles, her mother Jillian Oppenheimer wrote 5 articles; Melanie has written 9 articles so far.  She was a member of the ADB’s Armed Service working party from 2010 to 2021. In 2021 she became co-chair of the ADB’s Women’s Working Party.  

 

Carolyn Rasmussen (Victoria, continuing)
December 2021 – December 2026

Dr Carolyn Rasmussen, BA Hons, PhD (University of Melbourne), is a member of the Professional Historians Association and an Honorary Senior Fellow in Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. 

Her books include The Blackburns: Private Lives, Public Ambition (2019) - Winner of the History Publication Award, 2019 Victorian Community History Awards - Double Helix, Double Joy: David Danks the Father of Clinical Genetics in Australia (2010), ‘A Whole New World’: 100 Years of Education at The University High School, 1910-2010 (2010), Political Tourists. Travellers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1940s (2008), and A Place Apart: The University of Melbourne: Decades of Challenge (1996) co-authored with John Poynter.  

Her book A Museum for the People: A History of Museum Victoria and its Predecessors, 1854-2000 (2001) won a Victorian Community History award in 2002.  

Carolyn has written 15 ADB entries, has been a member of the ADB Victorian Working Party since December 1995, joined the ADB Editorial Board in August 2011, and became Chair of the Victorian Working Party in 2015.

 

Elizabeth Rushen (Victoria, new)   
December 2021 – December 2026     

Dr Elizabeth Rushen AM PhD (Monash University), is a public historian, Director of Melbourne Maritime Heritage Network, a former Executive Director of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and a former Chair of the History Council of Victoria. She has been involved in, and with, a wide range of historical audiences.      

Liz's first biography was a study of the life of John Marshall, a nineteenth-century shipowner and emigration agent. In 2018 Liz was awarded a Creative Fellowship by the State Library Victoria to research the life and writings of Edmund Finn ('Garryowen'), a project which is ongoing. Liz’s publications are mainly in the field of migration history and women in colonial Australia and include The Merchant’s Women (2008) Fair Game (2010), Single & Free: female migration to Australia, 1833-1837 (2011) Colonial Dushesses (2104), and Anastasia (2017). This is an area of critical importance for the forthcoming revisions of the first volumes of the ADB.  

Dr Rushen was appointed a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) for significant service to community history and heritage preservation.  She has been a member of the ADB Victorian Working Party since 2020.

 

Katerina Teaiwa (Oceania, ongoing) 
December 2021 – December 2026 

Associate Professor Katerina Teaiwa, BSc (Santa Clara University), MA (University of Hawai'i), PhD in Anthropology (ANU) was born and raised in Fiji and is of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American descent. She teaches in the School of Culture, History and Language in the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and is a practising visual artist. She has worked in contemporary cultural policy areas, as well as the history of indigenous encounters and phosphate mining. Her publications include work on the Pacific diaspora and the arts, and her monograph, Consuming Ocean Island; Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba was published in 2015.  

She was convener of Pacific Studies in the College of Asia and the Pacific (2007-2015), Head of the Department of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies (2014-15 and 2019), and co-founder of the Pasifika Australia Outreach Program (2007-2012). She is currently Deputy Director, Higher Degree Research Training, in CHL and Vice-President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies.     

Katerina became chair of the ADB’s Oceania Working Party in 2015. 

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