Christina Twomey

Biography

Christina Twomey is Professor and Head of History at Monash University and Vice-President, Academic Board. Her research focuses on the cultural history of war, with a particular interest in issues of imprisonment and captivity, witnessing, the photography of atrocity, gender and memory. From 2012-15 she was an ARC Future Fellow, and studied the imperial and humanitarian origins of concentration camps as they emerged in Cuba, South Africa and the Philippines.

Christina is also a historian of nineteenth and twentieth-century Australia, and co-authored with Mark Peel A History of Australia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Her previous books include Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare (ASP, 2002) and Australia’s Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which won a 2008 NSW Premier’s History Prize.

Currently on the Executive Committee of the Australian Historical Association, Christina is also a member of the international coordinating committee of Historians Without Borders. In 2012, Christina was the Distinguished Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at the University of Copenhagen and was President of the International Australian Studies Association 2011-12. From 2012-15 she was Co-Editor, with Professor Catharine Coleborne, of Australian Historical Studies and was elected Chair of the Board of AHS at the conclusion of her editorial term.