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Professor Kate Fullagar

Areas of expertise: eighteenth-century world history, especially British Empire, North America, and the Pacific; Indigenous-Imperial relations; visual culture; biography

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Full

Email: kate.fullagar@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Melbourne Campus

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0178-7429

Kate Fullagar is professor of history at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University. She is also honorary professor of history at Macquarie University and currently co-editor of the Australian Historical Association’s journal, History Australia. Kate specializes in the history of the eighteenth-century world, particularly the British Empire and the many indigenous societies it encountered. She is the author of The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire (New Haven, 2020) and The Savage Visit (Berkeley, 2012); the editor of The Atlantic World in the Antipodes: Effects and Transformations since the Eighteenth Century (Newcastle, 2012); and co-editor with Michael McDonnell of Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age(Baltimore, 2018). She is Lead Chief Investigator of an ARC Linkage project with the National Portrait Gallery called Facing New Worlds.

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Books

• Phillip and Bennelong: A History Unravelled (Sydney: Simon and Schuster, forthcoming 2023)
• The Warrior, The Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020)
• Co-editor with Michael A. McDonnell, eds., Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age, 1760-1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)
• The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 1710-1795 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012)
• Editor, The Atlantic World in the Antipodes: Effects and Transformations since the Eighteenth Century (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)

Recent articles and chapters

• “An Incident at the Sun Tavern: Changing the Discourse about Indigenous Visitors in Georgian Britain,” in Humanitarianism, Empire and Transnationalism, 1760-1995, eds. J. Damousi, T. Burnard, & A. Lester (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022)
• “The British Empire after Revolution: Swings to the East, Swings to the Right,” in The Cambridge History of the American Revolution, eds. M. Kars, M. A. McDonnell, & A. Schocket, vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2023)
• “America and the Pacific: The View from the Beach,” The Cambridge History of America in the World, eds. E. Gould, C. Pestana & P. Mapp, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)
• “Voyagers from the Havai‘i Diaspora: Polynesian Mobility, 1760s-1850s,” in L. Russell and A. McGrath, eds, The Routledge Companion to Global Indigenous History (London: Routledge, in press, 2021)
• “Remembering Cook, Again: The State of the Mixed Media Field,” Australian Historical Studies 4 (2021)
• “Producing Philosophes in Oceania: Enlightenment through Pacific Spaces,” Eighteenth-Century Life, Special Issue, 45/1 (2021)
• With Michael A. McDonnell, “Empire, Indigeneity, Revolution,” in K. Fullagar & M. A. McDonnell, eds., Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age, 1760-1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)
• “Envoys of Interest: a Cherokee, a Ra‘iatean, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire,” in K. Fullagar & M. A. McDonnell, eds., Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age, 1760-1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)
• With Leigh Boucher, “Modern British History and the Antipodes,” History Australia, vol. 13. No. 1, March 2016
• “Popular Contests over Empire in the Eighteenth Century: The Extended Version,” History Australia, vol. 13, No. 1, March 2016

Projects

Current

• 2020-2022 Australia-France Social Science Collaborative Research Program Grant, ‘Maohi Voyagers to France and Australia 1760s-1860s,’ Lead Chief Investigator with Véronique Dorbe-Larcade, University of French Polynesia
• 2017-2022 ARC Linkage Grant, ‘Facing New Worlds: Comparative Histories of Australasia and North America,’ Lead Chief Investigator with Michael A. McDonnell, Usyd (Chief Investigator), David Hansen, ANU (Chief Investigator), Joanna Gilmour, NPG (PartnerInvestigator) 

Accolades and awards

• 2022 Historians of British Art Book Prize for The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist (USA)
• 2021 Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize (UK) for The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist
• 2021 Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction (Australia) for The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist
• 2020 NSW Premier’s General History Prize (Australia) for The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist
• 2019 Visiting Fellowship, Humanities Council at Princeton University
• 2015 Lewis Walpole Travelling Fellowship, Yale University
• 2014 Visiting Fellow, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University
• 2013 Short listed for NSW Premier’s General History Prize for The Savage Visit

Appointments and affiliations

Current

• Member, College of Experts, Australian Research Council, 2022-2025
• Honorary Professor of History, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, 2020—
• Executive Board Member, Australian Historical Association, 2019-2022
• Member and Treasurer of the ANZ Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2017--

Editorial roles

• Co-editor of History Australiawith ACU team, 2022-2025
• Co-editor of History Australiawith Macquarie team, 2019-2022
• Member, Editorial Board, Studies in Imperialism, Manchester University Press 2021—
• Advisor, Editorial Board, History Today Magazine (UK), 2020—
• Board Member, Australian Historical Studies, 2017-2019
• Assistant Editor, Representations, 2001

Public engagement

Recent

• Speaker on Live from Pemberley podcast, New York, USA, May 2022,
• Speaker for the four-part 2SER podcast, Bennelong Revealed, forthcoming 2022
• Speaker with Megan Davis, Eddie Synot, and Mark McKenna for NAIDOC 2021, discussing my Inside Story article “Why Does Truth come Third?” 8 July 2021
• Speaker on John Paul Janke’s ‘Saturday Afternoon’ on Bennelong, ABC Radio, Sept. 2021
• Panelist for Sydney Writers Festival on ‘Histories of Mayhem and Margins’ 27 April 2021
• “All that Remains,” on the burial sites of Arthur Phillip and Bennelong, Inside Story, 30 August 2021
• “Ferdinand Magellan’s death 500 years ago…” The Conversation, April 2021
• Speaker on Late Night Live with Philip Adams, ABC Radio, 21 Sept. 2020
• Speaker for the Cook anniversary for the Big Ideas / ABC Radio National / State Library of Queensland podcast, 15 July 2020
• Speaker on Cook’s Pacific travels with Christine Anu, “Black Life Matters”, ABC Evenings radio, 8 May 2020
• “The Stories of Tupaia and Omai,” The Conversation, April 2020