Victoria Haskins

Biography

Victoria Haskins is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Newcastle and a leading cultural and social historian of race, labour and gender in colonial contexts. Her books and articles explore histories of domestic service, Indigenous labour, and cross-cultural relationships, with a focus on Australia, the USA and the British Empire. They include One Bright Spot (2005), Living with the Locals: Early Europeans’ Experience of Indigenous Life (2016), co-authored with John Maynard, and Colonialism and Male Domestic Service across the Asia Pacific (2019), co-authored with Julia Martínez, Claire Lowrie and Frances Steel. Through her work, Victoria brings the interpersonal and everyday dimensions of colonising power relations to the fore, showing how lives typically obscured in the historical record can reshape our understanding of colonial histories.

Victoria studied at the University of Sydney where she was awarded the University Medal in 1990 and completed her PhD in 1999. Her first academic appointment was at Flinders University (2000-2005), before she came to the University of Newcastle in 2006, where she co-founded the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre in 2013. Lead series editor of Empire’s Other Histories for Bloomsbury Academic, Victoria has held numerous national and international fellowships and awards, including an inaugural ARC Future Fellowship (2009-2013), a NSW Centenary of ANZAC Commemoration History Fellowship in 2013, and a 2023 Distinguished Fellowship with CUNY Graduate Center in New York. Victoria has also served as a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts and on the Council of the Australian Academy of Humanities.