2024-25 Professor of Australian Studies, University of Tokyo

Professor Amanda Nettelbeck has been appointed 2024-25 Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo.

Amanda is Professor in History in the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics at the University of Adelaide. She aims to use the appointment to strengthen connections between Japanese and Australian scholars in History and the Humanities and to highlight our common histories and heritage in the Asia Pacific region.

As a leading historian of Australian colonial history, Amanda’s research and publications address race and governance in settler colonial state-building; the application of colonial law to Indigenous people; the history and memory of Australia’s frontier wars; and the ongoing legacies of colonialism in the present. She has published several books on frontier violence and colonial history, including Indigenous Rights and Colonial Subjecthood: Protection and Reform in the 19th Century British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2019), awarded the 2020 Australian and New Zealand Law & History Society Legal History Prize. Her current book project is Unsettled Subjects: Race, Mobility and Colonial Citizenship, contracted to Cambridge University Press.

‘Time spent at the University of Tokyo’, Amanda commented, ‘will provide opportunities to develop academic interactions with Japanese scholars, and to learn more about Japan and its ties with Australia’. She looking forward to teaching students about Australia’s colonial past and its contemporary society and culture.

InASA President Professor Anna Johnston said that this was an excellent appointment: “Professor Nettelbeck is a highly esteemed colleague with unique skills in connecting people through her innovative teaching and scholarship. As the 2018 Keith Cameron Professor of Australian Studies at University College Dublin, Amanda brings to Japan high-level experience in working with students, academics and Australia’s overseas Embassies. She is an exceptional appointment to the long-standing AJF Chair at the University of Tokyo.”

The Professor of Australian Studies position at the University of Tokyo is supported by the Australia-Japan Foundation (AJF). The selection process is managed with assistance from the International Australian Studies Association (InASA). Applications for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 terms for the Visiting Professorship will open in 2024.