Emma Christopher

Biography

Associate Professor Emma Christopher is a historian and filmmaker who researches the Black diaspora. She currently holds an eight-year Scientia Fellowship at the University of New South Wales and is leading an interdisciplinary, international ARC-funded project entitled ‘Slavery, Race, Sugar: South Sea Islanders in Australia’. Her latest projects include constructing a database of New Guineans trafficked to Queensland in the 1880s and writing a book about the intersection of Atlantic and Pacific history within this story. She also continues working with the people of the Yurumanguí palenque in Pacific Colombia, studying the present-day struggles associated with their unique rebel slave ancestry.

Her books have won the Kay Daniels Prize, the Ernest Scott Prize, and been named as a Choice outstanding academic title. She is also a documentary maker and is the director and producer of They Are We, which won six Best Documentary Awards, was chosen as the United Nations’ Remembrance of Slavery film in 2015 and was called ‘an inspiration’ and ‘a victory over slavery’ by UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon.