Dr Malcolm Allbrook

School of History

ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Dr Malcolm Allbrook is Senior Lecturer in History, Managing Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) and a Research Fellow in the National Centre of Biography at the ANU School of History.

Malcolm’s research interests include:

– Australian history; colonial and transnational histories in the Indian Ocean region, the formal and informal networks connecting individuals and families around the oceanic sphere, and the diverse contexts in which they functioned and were sustained;

– Indigenous histories, including collaborative ways to research and present community histories using voice, sound, photographic and filmic images;

– Biography and life writing, particularly of those less visible in national and landscape narratives, and the use of the range of documentary source materials, including letters and journals, paintings and photographs, and oral histories;

– Landscape history and the deep past, particularly issues connected with biography and life writing of ancient lives.

He has authored and co-authored four books: Never Stand Still with Darraga Watson (Jarlmadangah Burru Aboriginal Corporation, 2013); Henry Prinsep’s Empire (ANU Press, 2014); Carlotta’s Perth with Mary Anne Jebb (City of Perth, 2017); and Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee: We’re Telling All of You: The Creation, History and People of Dambeemangaddee Country with Valda Blundell et al. (Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation, 2017). His most recent book is an edited collection: Family History and Historians in Australia and New Zealand: Related Histories (with Sophie Scott-Brown, Routledge, 2021).