Professor Peter Read

Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow
PhD (ANU)
Room 813 Brennan Building

+61 2 9351 2877

Peter Read comes to the History Department from the ANU where he has worked for most of his academic life. There he lectured in Australian and Aboriginal history, held a Research Fellowship in the Urban Studies Program, an ARC Research Fellow, an ARC Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, and was Deputy Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies.

Research areas

Peter Read is working on a history of Aboriginal Sydney. He is particularly interested in returning historical materials and information back to the Sydney Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in attractive and useful ways. He works with an Indigenous and non-Indigenous team in a variety of electronic and print display forms. Under the Indigenous protocol consultations with Professor Dennis Foley, he collaborates with researcher and educator Julie Janson, website developer Dr Susana Sukovic and film-maker Sheena Kitchener, on a number of innovatory projects. These include developing an interactive website and time line, initially in the Gurringai-speaking areas of Sydney, a series of three posters for schools on Gurringai history, family-history 'wikis' and an interactive historical map for the the whole of Sydney.

A secondary but parallel interest is memorialisation in Latin America after state terror, especially Chile and Argentina. With Associate Professor Judith Keene and Professor Heather Goodall he edited the forthcoming special edition of Public History entitled "Where Are The Bodies? A Transnational Examination of State Violence and Its Consequences."

He follows developments in the writing of biography, and teaches, with Mark McKenna an Honours class on that subject. With Associate Professor Maureen Perkins and Professor Brij Lal he holds a Discovery Grant 'A study of writers and regional identity in the Pacific, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand' and is helping to organise a conference on that subject at the National Museum of Australia, February 2010.

Selected publications

Tripping Over Feathers. Scenes in the Life of Joy Janaka Wiradjuri Williams. A Stolen Generations Narrative (UWA Press, October 2009).

Haunted Earth (2003)

Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership (2000)

A Rape of the Soul So Profound: The Return of the Stolen Generation (1999)

Returning to Nothing: The Meaning of Lost Places (1996)

Long Time Olden Time: Aboriginal Accounts of Northern Territory History (1992)

Charles Perkins: A biography (1990)

Other professional activites

• General Editor of the A rated journal Aboriginal History
• Public Officer for Stolen Generations Link Up (NSW).