Academy Fellow

Penny Edmonds is Matthew Flinders Professor of History at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Penny was awarded a PhD in History from the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. Penny's research is distinguished by over two decades of creative and interdisciplinary work in the areas of nineteenth-century British empire and setter colonialism in the Australian and Pacific region, transnational and postcolonial histories, heritage and museums. She seeks to bring a critical theory perspective to questions of colonialism, race, reconciliation and redress, humanitarianism, slavery and unfreedom in Australia and the Western Pacific region.

Penny has broad industry and professional experience in the field of history and the arts and cultural heritage sector, and has worked in museums both nationally and internationally, including at the Australian Museum, Sydney, Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and as Andrew Mellon Fellow in Heritage, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C (1991–1994). More recently, as a Trustee of the Board of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Penny was a member of the working group that wrote and delivered the landmark apology to Tasmanian Indigenous peoples on behalf of the organisation in February 2021. Acknowledging 200 years of colonisation and genocide, the apology was the first ever to given by a state or federal museum in Australia. 

Penny’s recent book Settler Colonialism and Reconciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings (Palgrave 2016) was shortlisted for the AHA/University of Melbourne’s Ernest Scott Prize for best book in Australian and NZ colonial history. She was awarded the 2018 Inaugural Theory Race and Colonialism Essay (TRACE) Award, Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society, and the 2014 ASSA Paul Bourke Award commendation, Australian Academy of Social Sciences in Australia award for Panel C (History, Philosophy, Law, and Political Science) for her ‘multi-disciplinary approach to settler colonialism’ and ‘theoretical depth and originality’.

Penny has significant experience in university governance and research leadership. She served as Dean of Research in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 2020-2022 (three years) at Flinders University, where she led the strategic development of the college's research centre Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts. 

Penny is a past co-editor of Australian Historical Studies (2015-2018) and was a member of the founding editorial board of Settler Colonial Studies.

She has served as a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts Humanities and Creative Arts panel (2013-2015), and the ARC Engagement and Impact panel for Humanities and Creative Arts (2018).

• Board of Trustees, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart (2018–2021)

• ARC Impact and Engagement panel, Humanities & Creative Arts (2018)

• ARC College of Experts, Humanities & Creative Arts panel (2013–2015)

• Executive Member, Australian Historical Association (2012–2014) 

2018 Inaugural Theory Race and Colonialism Essay (TRACE) Award, Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society, for ‘Emancipation Acts on the Oceanic Frontier? Intimacy, Diplomacy, Colonial Invasion and the Legal Traces of Protection in the Bass Strait World, 1832’, Law and History (2017).

2017 Shortlisted Ernest Scott Prize, University of Melbourne /Australian Historical Association, Settler Colonialism and (Re)Conciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances and Imaginative Refoundings, (Palgrave UK, 2016).

2014 Shortlisted for the Patricia Grimshaw Prize, Australian Historical Studies, for ‘Collecting Looerryminer’s ‘Testimony’: Aboriginal Women, Sealers, and Quaker Humanitarian Anti-Slavery Thought and Action in the Bass Strait Islands, Australian Historical Studies, 2014.

2014 ASSA Paul Bourke Award commendation, Australian Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Award for Panel C (History, Philosophy, Law, and Political Science) for 'multi-disciplinary approach to settler colonialism' and 'theoretical depth and originality'.

2012 Mary Bennett Prize, Australian Women’s History Network for 'The Intimate, Urbanising Frontier: "Native Camps", Gender Relations and Settler-Colonialism's Violent Array of Spaces Around Early Melbourne',Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity (Palgrave, 2010).

2012-2017 ARC Future Fellowship FT110100572 ‘Reform in the Antipodes: Quaker Humanitarians, Imperial Journeys and Early Histories of Human Rights’.

2007-2010 ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Melbourne.

2010 Highly commended for ‘First History Book’, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (2010) for ‘Urbanizing Frontiers’ (Uni. British Columbia Press, 2010).

1991-1994 Andrew W. Mellon Advanced Fellowship in Heritage Conservation, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

1. Settler Colonialism and (Re)Conciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances and Imaginative Refoundings (Palgrave, 2016).

2. Penny Edmonds, ‘Monuments on Trial: #BlackLivesMatter, “Travelling Memory” and the Transcultural Afterlives of Empire’, History Australia 4 (2021): 801–22.

3. Penelope Edmonds, ‘The Case of Nie’s Refusal: Gender, Law and Consent in the Shadow of Pacific Slavery’, Australian Feminist Law Journal 46, no. 2 (2021): 265–83.

4. Penelope Edmonds, ‘Emancipation Acts on the Oceanic Frontier: Intimacy, Diplomacy, Colonial Invasion and the Legal Traces of Protection in the Bass Strait World, 1832’, Law & History 20 (2017): 20–44. Awarded the Australian and NZ Law & History Theory Race and Colonialism Essay (TRACE) Award 2018.

5. Penelope Edmonds, ‘Activism in the Antipodes: Transnational Quaker Humanitarianism and the Troubled Politics of Compassion in the Early Nineteenth Century’, The Transnational Activist: Transformations and Comparisons from the Anglo-World since the Nineteenth Century, ed. Stefan Berger and Sean Scalmer (Palgrave, 2018).