Lynette Russell

Biography

Lynette Russell is Professor of Indigenous Studies (History) at the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, at Monash University. Her work is deeply interdisciplinary and collaborative, and her research outputs are focused on showing the dynamism of Aboriginal responses to colonialism; their agency and subjectivity.

Lynette is the immediate past president of the Australian Historical Association and Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. She has also held fellowships at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and is a member of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Lynette is a 2019 recipient of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellowship, with her project, ‘Global Encounters and First Nations Peoples: 1000 Years of Australian History’. She was also awarded the 2019 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Fellowship, recognising her role as an ambassador for women in research, and allowing a mentoring program for young Indigenous academic women in each year of her Laureate program.

She is widely published and is the author or editor of 12 books, specialising in Aboriginal history. Her latest book is Australia’s First Naturalists: Indigenous Peoples’ Contribution to early Zoology, winner of the 2019 Whitley Award for Historical Zoology.