Just over a year after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, an outbreak of smallpox devastated Aboriginal communities living on Country around Botany Bay.
New research by historian Distinguished Professor Lynette Russell AM FAHA FASSA and a team of scholars at the ARC Centre for Excellence for Indigenous Futures (CIEHF) strongly suggests this was the first occurrence of smallpox infection for Aboriginal communities—rather than theories smallpox transmission occurred via Makassan trade routes to the north.
By bringing together Indigenous knowledge holders, historians, ecologists, archaeologists, and computer modellers, this innovative new research creates a model of the possible transmission paths of smallpox across Australia via known Indigenous trading routes.
It’s the kind of transdisciplinary research that Lynette Russell, the Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, finds particularly exciting.
“My use of the prefix is intentional,” explains Professor Russell. “Interdisciplinary research integrates knowledge and methods from different academic disciplines, such as history, archaeology, science, and health so the new understanding emerge from that combination. But transdisciplinary research goes one step further and explicitly includes the participation of the stakeholders from outside the academic realm.”
“In my research, that might be including Indigenous people or accessing oral history or interview materials that gives me people’s perspectives from beyond the Academy. This work is something I’ve grown over my career, and I’m excited by the work I’m doing, and the people I’m working with.”
Global encounters
Professor Russell was born in Melbourne. She graduated from La Trobe with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Archaeology and studied history and anthropology.
“I did a few seasons of field work, and I realised archaeology just didn’t suit me,” she laughs. “I don’t really like getting dirty! Which is a difficult thing to avoid if you’re going to be an archaeologist.”
“I realised my interests lie in the text,” says Prof Russell. “So, I decided to move to the University of Melbourne where I did my PhD in historical studies. That was an opportunity to undertake museum research and archival research which I enjoyed tremendously.”
Those research interests would grow to be far-ranging, and include Aboriginal people in the maritime industry, settler encounters and Aboriginal, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Makassan encounters and contacts.
In 2020, Prof Russell began a five-year Laureate Fellowship, Global Encounters & First Nations Peoples: 1000 Years of Australian History, which examined one thousand years of dynamic encounters between Australia’s Indigenous peoples and sea voyagers.
“There’s been a very significant shift in the way people conceptualise the idea of an encounter,” says Prof Russell.
“Particularly in Northern Australia, we have probably the best part of a thousand years of contact with Southeast Asia, not the couple of hundred years that most people have suggested in the past.”
One outcome of Russell’s Laureate project is an online open, interactive database. It features dozens of stories of encounters between Aboriginal communities and voyagers. The oldest encounter is found on Anindilyakwa Country/Groote Eylandt—a small pottery shard dated to between 1050-1200 AD suggests Aboriginal people were trading with voyagers for well over 700 years before British arrival.
‘Possibly millions’ in Australia pre-settlement
Professor Russell is a Chief investigator for CIEHF, established in 2024. CIEHF brings together Traditional Owners and researchers on Country, to utilise multiple knowledges to support healthy land and sea Country.
In partnership with historians, archaeologists, mathematical computer modellers and anthropologists, the team’s current project examines the pre-European population of Australia.
“This work extends on the modelling of our smallpox research, and we’ve concluded that the population of Australia before European settlement has been grossly underestimated. This is significant—we’re talking about there possibly being millions of people in Australia when Europeans arrived.”
The research, which suggests there were upwards of 2 million Indigenous people in Australia before 1788, was published in Human Nature Behaviour in September 2026.
Prof Russell has had a decorated career. In July, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Historical Association in recognition of her extraordinary career and contribution to issues of National importance. In 2019, she was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for significant service to higher education, Indigenous history, and professional organisations.
She is the only Australian scholar elected to both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute in London and was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023.
“I think I’m incredibly fortunate to have been able to do the things I’ve done and to do it at the time I did,” she says.
“Throughout my career, I’ve worked with brilliant people who are great at what they do, and I love mentoring early career scholars and seeing their careers flourish. I despair about how the higher education sector is going now.”
“I’ve also been blessed to live with my life partner, another academic. There’s never been tension in the house because someone needs to work, and the other doesn’t want them to!” she laughs. “We both just get it. That kind of relationship has been a bonus, and it’s a coming together of minds. It’s made me into a much better scholar than I think I would have been than just on my own.”
