About the Authors
Nikita Vanderbyl[1] is a writer, researcher, and teacher of history to undergraduate students. She is most interested in the transnational art histories of Aboriginal cultural objects and artworks from the nineteenth century and their relevance to communities today.
Kat Ellinghaus is an Associate Professor of History in the School of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University, where she teaches Australian history. She is of Irish and German descent and is the author of Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in the United States and Australia, 1887-1937 (University of Nebraska Press, 2006) and Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). In 2014 she was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant to write a history of Aboriginal exemption policies in Australia, a project which continues in collaboration with Judi Wickes, Kella Robinson, Lucinda Aberdeen and Jennifer Jones. In 2019 Kat was lead Chief Investigator on a successful Australian Research Council Discovery project grant which funded a large team to research a project entitled ‘Indigenous mobilities to and through Australia: agency and sovereignties’. In 2020, together with Barry Judd and Richard Broome, she was awarded an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative Grant to produce a four-volume collection of primary documents entitled ‘Indigenous Australia: A History of Documents 1770-2000’ to be published by Routledge. Kat has researched and written extensively on Indigenous assimilation policies and made an enduring contribution to the field in Australia and internationally. She has presented work to Australian, Canadian and US journals, conferences and publishing houses and has made significant interventions into the history of Indigenous assimilation policy, colonial history, intimacy, gender and racial discourse, and to the task of bringing Australian history to the attention of the international scholarly community and beyond. In the field of Australian settler colonial history, ethical scholarly practices are becoming as, if not more, important than scholarly esteem and expertise. In her most recent work Kat has added a new and important focus: collaborative practice and history writing based on collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and people which places ethics and community at the highest priority.
Clare O’Hanlon is a librarian who is passionate about encouraging collective reflective practice and making critical and diverse knowledges, theories, and histories accessible within, across and beyond the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum (GLAM) and higher education sectors. Their practice is guided by social justice principles, compassion, courage, and creativity.
Thomas Amos is a Bachelor of Laws (Honours)/Arts graduate from the Wimmera town of St. Arnaud on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Thomas developed a keen interest in history from a young age, thanks due his late great-grandmother and grandmother being researchers at the local Historical Society. Thomas works as a Peer Learning Advisor at La Trobe University Library and will start History Honours in 2024.
Paul Doogood was born and bred in Dandenong, grew up loving music and literature (and the Richmond Football Club) – and hating high school. He became an apprentice Electrical Linesman with the SEC as a 15-year-old in 1977, but continued to focus on music and literature, playing in a number of loud, weird and angry post-punk bands in the late 70s and early 80s. After his first stint at La Trobe in the late 1980s, he added theatre to the list of things he loves, somehow falling into a career as a puppeteer with Polyglot Puppet Theatre from 1989 through to the early noughties. Stony broke after 20 years in the theatre, he returned to working as a Linesman for 10 years, before essaying another attempt at getting a degree in 2018. He has just graduated and is considering doing Honours next year.
Madeleine Gome is a history and law graduate currently working in the Victorian Government. Her Honours thesis examined the likelihood a referendum on a First Nations’ Voice to parliament would succeed. Madeleine enjoyed completing part of her studies in Norway and Hong Kong. She lives and works on Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Country.
Jose Manga was born and raised in Peru where he worked in the cultural tourism sector for sixteen years, before migrating to Australia in 2014. In 2018, Jose started his studies at La Trobe University, graduating in 2021 as a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in History. He lives in Bendigo, Victoria, and currently works at the Bendigo Art Gallery. Jose plans to further his studies in the Museums and Cultural Heritage field. Jose has also been a volunteer firefighter in Peru and Australia for more than twenty years.
Nicholas Short is an English student and shoemaker based in Melbourne. He is attracted to topics related to the Modernist movement and more broader studies in human subjectivity. At the centre of this attraction is an exploration of the definition of ‘meaning’ and how that concept affects human life.
