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, fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association. 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 Phillip and Bennelong: A History Unravelled (Sydney, 2023), 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 was 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, 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
- “Remembering a forgotten anchor of the eighteenth-century British Empire,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century British Empire, ed. Kathleen Wilson, (CUP, forthcoming 2026)
- “Bennelong’s Handkerchiefs,” special issue on ‘Object Mobilities’, ANZ Journal of Art (forthcoming 2026)
- With K. Quigley and K. Flannery, “Marine Materialities, Oceanic Humanities, and Eighteenth-Century Seas,” Eighteenth-Century Life (forthcoming 2026)
- “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, 2025)
- “Cherokees in the Revolutionary Era,” The Age of Revolutions, eds. C. Ermus and B. Banks (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, forthcoming 2025)
- “Reframing the Tahitian Archipelago: Insights from the Whole Lives of Tupaia, Purea, and Hitihiti” in S. Konishi, T. Griffith, M. Allbrook, eds, Reframing Indigenous Biography (London: Routledge, 2024)
- “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)
- “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)
Recent Projects
- 2024-2027 Bloomsbury Cultural History of Oceania, six volumes, General editor with Katerina Teaiwa, Australian National University
- 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
- 2017-2024 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 (Partner Investigator)
Recent awards
- 2024 Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK)
- 2024 Visiting William Dobell Chair in Art History, Australian National University
- 2024 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship
- 2024 Bennelong & Phillip shortlisted for Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non Fiction, Margarey Medal for Biography, The Age Book of the Year Prize, Ernst Scott Prize, the NSW Australian History Prize, the NSW Community History Prize, ACT Literary Award for Nonfiction, and Canberra Critics Circle Prize
- 2023 Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
- 2022 The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artistwon the Historians of British Art (USA), the Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction (Australia), the NSW Premier’s General History Prize (Australia), and was shortlisted for James Tait Black Biography Prize (UK)
- 2019 Visiting Fellowship, Humanities Council at Princeton University
Appointments and affiliations
Current
- Vice President, Australian Historical Association, 2024-26
- Co-Chair, Oceania Working Party Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2024->
- Historical Consultant to Getty + London National Portrait Gallery, 2024->
- Member, College of Experts, Australian Research Council, 2022-2025
- 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 Australia with ACU team, 2022-2025
- Co-editor of History Australia with 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
Selected Recent
- Creator, Podcast, ‘Unsettling Portraits: Three-part series on empire and Indigenous representation,’ Impact Studios, Sydney (as creator & host), 2025
- “Why the Humanities are Worth Fighting For,” Inside Story, February 2025
- With Michelle Arrow, “A Saga and Other Stories,” Royal Historical Society blog, February 2025
- Speaker on Bennelong & Phillip at: State Library NSW; Stanton Library NSW; Australian National Maritime Museum, 2023; Sutherland Library NSW 2024, Lane Cove Hist. Soc. NSW, 2024; History Council Victoria, VIC, 2024; Royal Aust. Hist. Society, 2024; Blackheath History Forum, 2024; Parramatta Hist. Soc, 2024; Museums of History NSW, 2024; History Teachers’ Assoc. of Australia, 2024; Late Night Live ABC 2024; CityRoadPod, 2023; ABC Overnight Talkback, 2023; Unseen Histories blog, 2023; ANU Meet the Author, now on youtube, 2023, ABC Victoria radio, 2023; Life sentences podcast, 2024; ABC RN with Julian Morrow, 2024
- Speaker for Sorrento Writers Festival, April 2024; Byron Bay Writers Festival, Aug. 2024
- “Reframing Gauguin,” Inside Story, July 2024
- “Living with Loss,” Inside Story, May 2024
- Speaker on ‘Marguerite Wolters,’ SBS Dutch Radio, April 2024
- “I weep more at a wedding than at a funeral,” Inside Story, April 2024
- “A History of Bennelong & Phillip,” Openbook, Magazine of SLNSW, 2024, 56-61
- “British Studies and the Humanities in Australia,” NACBS magazine (USA), Feb. 2024.
- “Western Civilisation and its Discontents” Inside Story, October 2023
- Guest on ABC Radio Art Show, ‘A Famous Portrait,’ May 2023
- Speaker for the six-part 2SER podcast, Bennelong Revealed, 2023
- Panelist for Berry Writers Festival on ‘Democracy’s Future’, 23 Oct. 2022
- “All that Remains,” on the burial sites of Arthur Phillip and Bennelong, Inside Story, 30 August 2021
- “Why does truth come third?” On the Uluru Statement, Inside Story, 8 June 2021
