News

ACU historian elected to Australian Academy of the Humanities

ACU historian Shino Konishi has been acknowledged as one of Australia's top humanities researchers, with her election as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities.

Associate Professor Konishi is a Yawuru Indigenous historian, whose work includes histories of cross-cultural encounters in 18th and 19th Australia, French exploration in Australia and the Pacific, and their interactions with, and representations of, Aboriginal people.

She is the author of The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012), and a series of publications on Aboriginal history. 

Her current projects include:

• An Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography (ARC Indigenous Discovery Fellowship)
• Collecting the West:  How collections create Western Australia (ARC Linkage)
• Exploring the Middle Ground:  New Histories of Cross­‐Cultural Encounters in Australian Maritime and Land Exploration (ARC Discovery Grant)
• Through Travellers’ Eyes: Foreign Observations of Aboriginal People and British Colonisation (ARC Discovery Indigenous Research Development Grant).

Associate Professor Konishi is one of 25 fellows for 2021 announced by the Academy in fields including bioethics and the philosophy of medicine to Indigenous Australian and Pacific languages and cultures; the Chinese justice system, digital media technologies, music performance and education, Islam and interfaith relations; feminism, and literary studies.

“I am honoured to welcome our new Fellows to the Academy, elected in recognition of their distinguished achievement in the humanities and arts disciplines and for their outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life,” said Academy President Professor Lesley Head FASSA FAHA said these distinguished professionals reflected Australia’s diverse learned humanities.

‘‘The broad-ranging research fields and areas of contribution by the newly elected Fellows showcase the depth and diversity of the humanities in Australia, and celebrate the ability of the humanities to educate, guide, inform and shape vital areas of cultural, social and environmental thought, policy and planning,” said Professor Head. 

Other fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities at ACU are Professor Susan Broomhall, Professor Joy Damousi, Professor Amanda Nettelbeck. Professor David Runia, and Professor David Sim. Professor Damousi is Immediate Past President of the Academy.