Bronwen Douglas

Biography

Bronwen Douglas FAHA received a PhD from the Australian National University in 1973 and taught Pacific History for 25 years at La Trobe University. She was Senior Fellow in Pacific & Asian History at the ANU until her retirement in 2012 and is now Honorary Professor in the ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences. Her research and writing initially focussed on the ethnographic history of New Caledonia and south Vanuatu, but from the mid-1990s has combined the ethnohistory of encounters in Oceania with the history of the human sciences and the sciences of place. She has published more than 80 articles or book chapters and five books, including Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania 15111850 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Collecting in the South Sea: The Voyage of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux 17911794 (Sidestone Press, ed. 2018); and Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race 17501940 (ANU E Press, ed. 2008). She is a past editor of the Journal of Pacific History. She is fluent in French, having done detailed research on French colonialism in Oceania and raciology in France and undertaken fieldwork in Francophone areas. She has reading competence for professional purposes in Spanish, Portuguese, and German.