Jane Lydon

Biography

Professor Jane Lydon is the Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History at the University of Western Australia. She currently serves as the Chair of History (2016-2018) and Deputy Head of the School (Research) Humanities. Her research centres upon Australia’s colonial past and its legacies in the present. Her books include Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians (Duke, 2005) and Fantastic Dreaming: The Archaeology of an Aboriginal Mission (AltaMira, 2009), which won the Australian Archaeological Association’s John Mulvaney Book Award in 2010 and the Australasian Association for Historical Archaeology’s Graham Connah Book Award for 2011. Her book The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the Emergence of Indigenous Rights (NewSouth, 2012) won the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards’ History Book Award. She edited Calling the Shots: Aboriginal Photographies (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2014) which brings together Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal scholars to explore the Indigenous meanings of the photographic archive. Major current research interests include anti-slavery in Australia, the role of magic lantern slides in shaping early visual culture, and the emotional narratives that created relationships across the British Empire. Most recently she edited Visualsing Human Rights and co-edited (with Lyndall Ryan) Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre.She is on the Council of the National Trust (WA), and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries London.Jane tweets at @LydonJane