Our Team
This ARC research project is led by Prof. Penny Edmonds. The international collaborators are Prof. Zoë Laidlaw, University of Melbourne, and Prof. Elizabeth Elbourne, McGill University, Canada. The project was awarded two Elite PhD scholarships (now completed) to Dr Audrey J. Gerrard and Dr Paige Gleeson.
Penny Edmonds
Chief Investigator
Penny Edmonds is Matthew Flinders Professor of History at Flinders University, Adelaide. Her research investigates the British Empire and settler colonialism in the Australian and Pacific region, with a critical-theory perspective on race, law, humanitarianism, slavery, reconciliation and heritage. Penny’s book Settler Colonialism and Reconciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings (Palgrave, 2016) was shortlisted for the University of Melbourne’s Ernest Scott Prize for best book in Australian and New Zealand colonial history. Her forthcoming book is Eyewitnesses to Empire: Antislavery, Dispossession, and Humanitarian tours to the Antipodes.
Zoë Laidlaw
International Collaborator
Zoë Laidlaw is Professor of History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, and was previously at Royal Holloway University of London (2005–2018). Her expertise lies in the nineteenth-century history of the British Empire, and her work encompasses imperial networks and governance; humanitarianism; settler colonialism and Indigenous-settler relations; slavery, its abolition and legacies (including especially in Australia); the imperial state; commissions of inquiry; the creation of imperial knowledge; and collective biography. Her most recent book is Protecting the Empire’s Humanity: Thomas Hodgkin and British Colonial Activism, 1830 to 1870 (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Elizabeth Elbourne
International Collaborator
Dr Elizabeth Elbourne is Associate Professor and Departmental Chair of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. Her current research investigates Indigenous–settler relations, with a focus on religion and cultural colonialism and the ambiguities of gender and colonialism. Elizabeth is author of Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002). Her recent book is Empire, Kinship and Violence: Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770–1842 (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Dr Audrey J. Gerrard
Elite PhD
Dr Audrey J. Gerrard was awarded her PhD from the University of Tasmania, Australia, in 2019. Her thesis is titled Humanitarianism, Imperial Commerce, and Colonial Hegemony: Quaker ‘Testimonials to Suffering’ in Tahiti and Hawaii in the 1830s ‘Age of Reform’. She is a postdoctoral fellow in History with the Fate of Nations: History and Political Economy of Natural Resources, and the Hidden Companies of the Global Economy projects at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway. She is an Adjunct Researcher at Flinders University, Adelaide, with a focus on colonial law, race and labour in plantation economies.
Dr Paige Gleeson
Elite PhD
Dr Paige Gleeson is a historian specialising in colonial museums and Australian and Pacific Indigenous history. She was awarded her PhD in History for the thesis titled The Ethnology Room: Exhibiting Indigenous Material Culture at the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, 1885–2021, from the University of Tasmania in 2022, where she is now an Adjunct Fellow. Paige works in the museum sector and her current research includes a collaborative project on the nineteenth-century Australian Indigenous collections held at the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington.
Fiona Lawry
Research Assistant, Web Design & Communications
Fiona is a research assistant, web designer and communications specialist for the project. She has worked in cultural heritage, tutored in Urban Design, and has been a research assistant for urban design projects at RMIT Melbourne.