About

I am a professor of history at Australian Catholic University, fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. I specialise in the history of the eighteenth-century world, particularly in Britain, Australia, North America, and the Pacific. My work has focused on imperialism, Indigenous relations, visual culture, and experimental approaches to biography. I have also been an active advocate for the public value of history in Australia, appearing before a Senate Inquiry (2026) and writing often in popular media.

Raised in Canberra, Australia, I graduated from the Australian National University with a honours degree in History in 1997. I studied for my MA (2001) and PhD (2005) at the University of California at Berkeley.

I am the author of The Savage Visit: New World People and Imperial Popular Culture (Univ. of California Press, 2012); The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire (Yale University Press, 2020), and Bennelong & Phillip (Simon & Schuster, 2023). I have edited several collections including, with Michael McDonnell,  Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2018).

I have held visiting fellowships at the University of York (as a British Academy Fellow); Duke University (at the John Hope Franklin Center for the Humanities); Yale University (as a Lewis Walpole Library Travelling Fellow); Princeton (as a Humanities Council Fellow); and ANU (Dobell Visiting Chair). Some recent profiles are here.

Extra random information: I am a proud member of the Canberra Bilby’s Triathlon Club (strictly swimming only); my agent is David Godwin Associates UK; I live on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land (aka Canberra) with partner Iain McCalman, son Rohan, and shoodle Bonnie.

[useable headshot 2025, by Thorson Photography]

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