Annemarie McLaren

My teaching crosses History and Aboriginal Studies, with a focus in each course on methods and the craft of history.

• ABOR1000 Aboriginal People
• HIST3028 Visual Evidence
• HIST3023 Making History and the Politics of the Past
• HIST3001 History in Practice: Professional Project

• Empire and imperialism, including global and trans-imperial connections
• Aboriginal and cross-cultural history
• Australian history, especially New South Wales
• Indigenous diplomacy, material culture and exchange
• Catholicism and Indigenous peoples in imperial worlds
• Exploration history and colonial knowledge
• Difficult histories, public history and heritage

I am very happy to speak to prospective HDR and honours students in the following areas:

• Imperial history (especially the British Empire and the Oceanic world)
• Cross-cultural and Aboriginal history
• Australian history
• Indigeneity, public history and heritage
• Religious history in Australia / Oceania
• Catholicism in the Age of Empire and Revolution

Completed supervisions:

• Ashleigh Severinsen, 'The Aboriginal Land Inquiry: Recovering the Voices of the WA Aboriginal Land Rights Movement 1983–1984' (BA Honours, 2025). Shortlisted for the 2026 Margaret Medcalf Award for Excellence in Research using the Western Australian State Archives.
• Bethany Lilleyman, 'In the Heart of Leviathan: A Hobbesian Reading of Conrad's Heart of Darkness' (2024)
• Stevie Cole, 'The Art of Fiction: Fact, Myth and New Knowledge of the North Australian Expedition' (2021)

Current supervision:

• Carlos Lopez, ‘From Potts Point to the Pacific: A history of the Australian Sisters of Charity in Fiji, 1957-1966’, MPhil.

My research explores the cultural and political negotiations through which Aboriginal people and colonists made lives alongside, and entangled with, each other in the early contact zones, particularly in New South Wales. My book Aboriginal-Colonial Exchanges in New South Wales, 1800–1835 (OUP, 2025) traces this entangled world through objects such as clothing, breastplates and blankets, intercultural diplomatic events, and new inter-cultural practices such as guiding.

My current research has three strands.

The first has a global and imperial focus. Building on my ongoing interest in Indigenous–imperial diplomacy, it traces connections between the American colonies, the Caribbean, India and Australia, including practices of slavery, manumission and abolition. I explore these through the life of Lachlan Macquarie and those entangled with him, among them his Indian-born child slave turned valet, George Jarvis, with ongoing research in this area.

The second is religious history, particularly Catholicism in the Age of Empire and Revolution. My recent work examines the surprising baptism of Aboriginal people in New South Wales in the 1820s and 1830s. This work is part of the University of Notre Dame's Global Catholic Studies research hub, which brings scholars together through global collaborations, international conferences, publications and research projects.

The third is a collaborative project centred on a site of deep archaeological time and ongoing Indigenous community connection in Queensland. Traditional Owners, descendants and knowledge holders are co-researchers and co-authors of this work, along with archaeologists and a geomorphologist, which documents and interprets their enduring connection to place and Country.

• Aboriginal-Colonial Exchanges in New South Wales, 1800–1835: When the Strangers Came to Stay. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Past & Present Book Series), 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198943426.001.0001
  • Shortlisted, Australian History Prize, NSW History Awards 2026
  • Shortlisted, NSW Community and Regional History Prize, NSW History Awards 2026

• Accepted: "'Something Mysterious and Sacred': Catholic Baptism and Aboriginal People in Early Colonial New South Wales." In The Global Catholic Enlightenment: Balancing Church Authority and Modern Allegiances across Europe, the Americas, and Australia (1700–1840), edited by Shaun Blanchard, Mary Dunn, Rebecca Messbarger and Jürgen Overhoff. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, forthcoming 2027.
• "Slavery, Manumission and Abolition in the Life of Lachlan Macquarie." In Legacies of British Slavery in Australia and New Zealand, edited by Zoë Laidlaw and Jane Lydon, 58–77. Manchester: Manchester University Press (Studies in Imperialism), 2026.
• With Shino Konishi (University of Western Australia). "Searching in the Shadows: Aboriginal Women in Early Colonial New South Wales." In Strident Voices, Dissenting Bodies: Subaltern Women's Narratives, edited by Samraghni Bonnerjee, 71–87. London: Routledge, 2021.

• "Indigenous Diplomacy and Colonial Entanglement Through the Native Institution of New South Wales." History Compass 24, no. 6 (2026): e70040. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.70040
• "Delicate Diplomacy: Breastplates and Colonisation in Early New South Wales." Teaching History 60, no. 1 (2026): 26–30. https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.T2026050600021500673127790
• With Bruce Buchan (Griffith University). "Edinburgh's Enlightenment Abroad: Navigating Humanity as a Physician, Merchant, Natural Historian and Settler-Colonist." Intellectual History Review 31, no. 4 (2021): 627–649. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2020.1766807
• With Alison Clark (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge). "Captain Cook upon Changing Seas: Indigenous Voices and Reimagining at the British Museum." Journal of Pacific History 55, no. 3 (2020): 418–431. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2019.1663390
• "No Fish, No House, No Melons: The Earliest Aboriginal Guides in Colonial New South Wales." Aboriginal History 43 (2019): 33–55. https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.43.2019.02
• "A Many-Sided Frontier: History and 'Shades of Grey' in Sweet Country." Australian Historical Studies 50, no. 2 (2019): 235–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2019.1593468
• "Australia: The Vatican Museums Indigenous Collection." Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 2 (2018): 83–86.
• "Reading the Entangled Life of Goggey, an Aboriginal Man on the Fringes of Early Colonial Sydney." Ethnohistory 65, no. 3 (2018): 489–515. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-4451446

• Anna Clark, Making Australian History. Australian Historical Studies 54, no. 1 (2023): 168–169.
• Gaye Sculthorpe, Maria Nugent, and Howard Morphy, Ancestors, Artefacts, Empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums. Aboriginal History 47 (2023): 189–194.
• Tiffany Shellam, Meeting the Waylo: Aboriginal Encounters in the Archipelago. Australian Historical Studies 51, no. 4 (2020): 502–503.

• "'Something Mysterious and Sacred': Catholic Baptism and Aboriginal People in Early Colonial New South Wales, Australia." Symposium: Indigeneity, Mobility and the Age of Revolutions, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies (University of Notre Dame, USA) and Department of History, University of Sydney, Chau Chak Wing Museum, Sydney, 3–6 June 2025.
• “Catholic Baptism and Aboriginal People in Early Colonial New South Wales." The Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, the Americas and Australia (1700–1840): Balancing Loyalties between State, Nationality, Citizenship, and the Global Church. Center for Research on Global Catholicism, Saint Louis University, with The University of Notre Dame Australia, University of Münster and Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, 20–21 September 2024.
• "Slavery, Manumission and Abolition in the Life of Lachlan Macquarie." Australian Legacies of Slavery Conference, The University of Western Australia and State Library of Western Australia, Perth, 1–2 December 2023.
• Workshop participant, "Knowledge Frontiers Forum: The Future." The British Academy, the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Society Te Apārangi, QUT, Brisbane, 11–12 November 2019.
• "'This was, they said, what the white man believed, but it was not for the black man': Human Difference in the Writings of Brisbane's German Missionaries." Workshop: Humanity on the Move: Race, Landscape and Mobility in the Era of Enlightenment and Colonisation, Griffith University, 2–3 November 2019.
• With Bruce Buchan (Griffith University; delivered by Bruce Buchan). "Trading Places: Alexander Berry's Navigation of Humanity as Physician, Merchant, Landowner and Natural Historian." Enlightenment Identities: International Congress on the Enlightenment, University of Edinburgh, July 2019.
• "Negotiating Education: The First School for Aboriginal Children and the Diplomatic World of Colonial New South Wales, 1814–1822." Seminar paper, Wolfson College Education Society, University of Cambridge, 23 February 2019.
• "History, Imagination, and 'Shades of Grey' in Sweet Country." Keynote for a panel on Sweet Country, The Scale of History: Australian Historical Association Conference, Australian National University, July 2018.
• "'No Melons Here': Early Aboriginal Guides, the Guided, and the Politics of Encounter." Entangled Histories: Australian Historical Association Conference, University of Newcastle, July 2017.
• "Blackfellas and Whitefellas? Exploring Indigeneity at the Governor's Native Feast near Sydney, 1816–1834." Indigeneities – Territories, Spaces and Conceptual Mappings, Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany, November 2016.
• "The Politics of the Feast." Colonial and Post-Colonial New Researchers' Workshop, Institute of Historical Research, London, November 2016.
• Panellist, "IGHERT: Indigeneity in an Expanded Field." Area Studies in a Globalizing World: Past, Present and Future, Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, University of London, July 2016.
• "Dynamism and Dialogue: Re-Imagining Cross-Cultural Relations in Australia's Colonial History." Landbody – Indigeneity's Radical Commitments Conference, Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, May 2016.
• "Baubles and Beads? Re-thinking Brass Plates, Blankets, and Clothing amongst Aboriginal People in Early Colonial Sydney and its Hinterland." Seminar Series, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College London, April 2016.
• "Feasting, Gifting, Cheering and 'Indiscriminate Shrindy': Aboriginal-Colonial Relations at the Governor's Annual Native Assembly near Sydney, 1816–1834." Social History Society Conference, Lancaster University, March 2016.
• "Contemplating the Life of Goggey, an Aboriginal Man on Colonial Sydney's Western Fringes." Annual History Colloquium, Northern Territory Library, Darwin, November 2015.

• Aboriginal History Inc., Board Member
• Australian Historical Association, Member
• Global Catholic Studies, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Member

• Aboriginal History (journal), Review Editor
• Australian Dictionary of Biography, Western Australian Working Group
• Mentor for postgraduates, Australian Historical Association, January–December 2021
• Postgraduate Representative, Australian Historical Association, 2016–2018

• Shortlisted, Australian History Prize, NSW History Awards (State Library of NSW), 2026, for Aboriginal-Colonial Exchanges in New South Wales, 1800–1835
• Shortlisted, NSW Community and Regional History Prize, NSW History Awards (State Library of NSW), 2026, for Aboriginal-Colonial Exchanges in New South Wales, 1800–1835
• Allan Martin Award, Australian Historical Association, 2021
• Serle Award for the best postgraduate thesis in Australian history, Australian Historical Association, 2020 (national)
• Omohundro Institute and Historic Jamestowne Short Term Visiting Fellowship, 2018
• Australian Endeavour Fellowship, 2018
• Hakluyt Society Essay Prize, 2017 (international)