Dr Karen O'Brien
Karen O'Brien is a leading researcher in comparative and global socio-legal history. Her research knowledge and publications influence the field of colonisation, politics, sovereignty, political autonomy, economic fluctuation, crisis and social change, social and legal justice and rights. Karen's interests contribute to interdisciplinary understandings of individual and communal political expression in a comparative and global context. Through investigating a range of primary sources that express violence, hardship, racial brutality and vulnerability in a range of thematic, gender, temporal, geo-political and colonial contexts, her research explores how people across the world transcend life’s hardships by appealing to the law for justice. Her monograph Petitioning for Land: The Petitions of First Peoples of Modern British Colonies, Bloomsbury (2019) considers the efforts to promote the recognition of prior land ownership and the social context of colonisation and early modern colonial occupation within British colonies. More recently her research observes the socio-legal context of the cultural politics of speech with a focus on women who harness the power of speech to interrupt patriarchal dominance to assert a unique class of social authority and subvert imposed limitations to achieve political influence and personal agency. This research is published in a monograph entitled Cursing, Crisis and Customary Knowledge in Early Modern English Townships, (Palgrave, 2024).
Formerly an associate investigator of the Australia Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions throughout 2017-2023 and currently engaged in researching the milieu of early modern people, exploring a wide gamut of human experiences in emotional encounters with life, death, grief, pain, pleasure, belief, sadness, and conflict that are indicative of the visible emotional expression of legal, spiritual, and violent encounters of the everyday experiences of peoples of the early modern world. This will be published in a monograph entitled Global Encounters with Early Modern Emotions.
Interests
- Colonial and Imperial history, legal history, modern history, First Peoples political participation, narratives of historical and contemporary notions of justice, early modern colonial occupation, challenging colonial power, reconfigurations of discourse.
- Early modern Britain, litigation, especially litigation arising from interpersonal hostility depositions, interrogatories and various other manuscripts of the manorial, ecclesiastical and secular courts, the cultural politics of speech, spoken transgression, racial brutality and vulnerability in a range of thematic, gender, temporal, geo-political and colonial contexts.
- Early modern encounters with the world’s indigenous peoples, decolonisation, early modern cultural engagement,the milieu of early modern people through a wide gamut of human emotional experiences, emotional encounters with life, death, grief, pain, pleasure, belief, sadness, and conflict through material objects, the visible expression of emotional, legal, spiritual, and violent encounters that encompass a range of the everyday experiences of peoples of the early modern world.
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The practice of medicine and customary health-giving procedures in early modern and modern communities, the complex circumstances of the world of healing and harming using customary knowledge, popular culture, frameworks of cultural continuity, surveying verbal ritual and customary knowledge, magic and the practice of cunning. Investigation of customary knowledge within the circumstances of popular magic as a deep-seated custom in early modern lives. Customary knowledge as recorded in a wide variety of legal documents. Popular belief systems, cursing, magical traditions within the realm of medicine and customary knowledge as reflected in primary sources.
Teaching
Higher Degree Completions: Primary Supervisor
The Survival Paradox: Can A Culture Survive the Political Transgressions Of Post-War Democratisation?
In Pursuit of Development: Conditional Cash Transfers in Two Remote Indigenous Communities in the Philippines
Vessels of Culture, Identity and Knowledge: From Displacement to Emplacement Through Aboriginal Tied-Bark Canoe Making Practices in South-Eastern Australian Indigenous Communities.
Masters
Indigenous Knowledge in the Museum Context
Yarning with Minjungbal women: testimonial narratives of trans generational trauma and healing explored through relationships with country and culture, community and family.
Honours
Policy and Indigenous Activism at James Price Point
Karen's teaching influences the university environment where it informs, shapes and intensifies the University’s research and teaching in Indigenous contexts.
Previously Taught
- SCLG6916: Indigenous Rights - Global Issues
- SLSS2604: Indigenous Social and Legal Justice
- SLSS3601: Doing Socio-Legal Research
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Research of embedded emotions to provide a deeper understanding of human experience during the early modern period. An exploration of the emotional landscapes of early modern encounters. Exploring the complex interplay between individuals, cultures and the emotions that shaped their lives focusing on the emotions that were evoked in the many encounters that took place between different cultures and societies. This research is to be published in 2025 in a monograph entitled Global Encounters with Early Modern Emotions.
- Activism and extractivism as explored through relationships with land and water, culture, community and family. Environmental, economic and cultural consequences of global extractivism, with a special focus on Indigenous resistance movements.
- Editor, The Activist History Review
- https://activisthistory.com/
2022 HIstorical Society of South Australia Award
2019 AHRC International Travelling Award, Petitions, Birkbeck College, UK
2017 Associate Investigator Australia Research Council Centre of Excellence in History of theEmotions
2013 Visiting Professor University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China.
2005 The Murray Macgregor Memorial Fellowship, The Gladstone Library, Hawarden, North Wales
2001 Scholar-in-Residence, Melbourne University,
| Project title | Research student |
|---|---|
| Settler Colonialism and the Australian Environment: A Sociolegal Discourse Analysis of Decolonising Narratives Mobilised by First Nations Peoples in Modern Australian Environmental Conflicts | Caitlin MORTON |
Selected publications
(The Bluecoat Press, 2002)
Publications
Books
- O'Brien, K. (2019). Petitioning for Land: The Petitions of First Peoples of Modern British Colonies. London: Bloomsbury. [More Information]
- O'Brien, K. (2002). White Magic and the Cunning Folk. Liverpool, UK: The Bluecoat Press.
Book Chapters
- O'Brien, K. (2015). Indigenous Icons and Teaching Balanda: From Walkabout to Ten Canoes: Art, Activism and David Gulpilil. In Andrea Bandhauer, Michelle Royer (Eds.), Stars in World Cinema: Screen Icons and Star Systems Across Cultures, (pp. 156-166). London: I.B. Tauris. [More Information]
Journals
- O'Brien, K. (2020). Book review: 'Visualising Activism' Indigenous Media and Political Imaginaries in Contemporary Bolivia; Collective Situations: Readings in Contemporary Latin American Art 1995-2010. Visual Studies, 34(3). [More Information]
- O'Brien, K. (2019). The Larrakia Petitions for a Treaty and Land Rights. UK Parliaments Petition Committee, October. [More Information]
- O'Brien, K. (2016). Intimate Worlds: Kinship Relations and Emotional Investment among Nantwich Women 1603-1685. Journal of Family History, 41(2), 131-143. [More Information]
Conferences
- O'Brien, K. (2010). Indigenous Rights and the Politics of Indigenous Identity, Gender and Knowledge. 29th Annual Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Conference Owning the Past: Whose Past? Whose Present?.
- O'Brien, K. (2007). Macer's Herbal and Popular Medicine in Early Modern England. Network of Early European Research Forum.
- O'Brien, K. (2007). Regulating women: The mass media of the early modern world. Reporting Futures: journalism, new media, new - 2007 Public Right To Know Conference.
2020
- O'Brien, K. (2020). Book review: 'Visualising Activism' Indigenous Media and Political Imaginaries in Contemporary Bolivia; Collective Situations: Readings in Contemporary Latin American Art 1995-2010. Visual Studies, 34(3). [More Information]
2019
- O'Brien, K. (2019). Petitioning for Land: The Petitions of First Peoples of Modern British Colonies. London: Bloomsbury. [More Information]
- O'Brien, K. (2019). The Larrakia Petitions for a Treaty and Land Rights. UK Parliaments Petition Committee, October. [More Information]
2016
- O'Brien, K. (2016). Intimate Worlds: Kinship Relations and Emotional Investment among Nantwich Women 1603-1685. Journal of Family History, 41(2), 131-143. [More Information]
- O'Brien, K. (2016). Sexual impropriety, petitioning and the dynamics of ill will in daily urban life. Urban History, 43(2), 177-199. [More Information]
2015
- O'Brien, K. (2015). Indigenous Icons and Teaching Balanda: From Walkabout to Ten Canoes: Art, Activism and David Gulpilil. In Andrea Bandhauer, Michelle Royer (Eds.), Stars in World Cinema: Screen Icons and Star Systems Across Cultures, (pp. 156-166). London: I.B. Tauris. [More Information]
2014
- O'Brien, K. (2014). Book Review: J. Walvin, The Zong: A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery, Yale University Press, 2011, ISSN: 1292-8968. Revue Francaise de civilisation britannique - Cercles [French Journal of British Studies]. [More Information]
- O'Brien, K. (2014). Boots, Blankets and Bomb Tests: First Australian Petitioning and Resistance to Colonisation. Griffith Journal of Law and Human Dignity, 2(2), 357-376. [More Information]
- O'Brien, K. (2014). Companions of Heart and Hearth: Hardship and the Changing Structure of the Family in Early Modern English Townships. Journal of Family History, 39(3), 183-203. [More Information]
2011
- O'Brien, K. (2011). With my eyes, my heart and with my brain I am thinking: Testimony, Treaty and Decolonising Indigenous History from Images. Australia and New Zealand Law and History E-Journal, , 1-27. [More Information]
2010
- O'Brien, K. (2010). Indigenous Rights and the Politics of Indigenous Identity, Gender and Knowledge. 29th Annual Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Conference Owning the Past: Whose Past? Whose Present?.
2008
- O'Brien, K. (2008). Academic Language, Power and the Impact of Western Knowledge Production on Indigenous Student Learning. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 37, 56-60. [More Information]
2007
- O'Brien, K. (2007). Macer's Herbal and Popular Medicine in Early Modern England. Network of Early European Research Forum.
- O'Brien, K. (2007). Regulating women: The mass media of the early modern world. Reporting Futures: journalism, new media, new - 2007 Public Right To Know Conference.
- O'Brien, K. (2007). Violent Crime, Gender Relations and Law and Order in Early Modern England. Fenceposts in Legal History: 26th Annual Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Conference.
2002
- O'Brien, K. (2002). White Magic and the Cunning Folk. Liverpool, UK: The Bluecoat Press.
Selected Grants
2017
- First Nations Petitioning, O'Brien K, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Research Support Scheme (FRSS)
2016
- Indigenous Petitioning, O'Brien K, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions/Associate Investigator
Other
2019 Karen's monograph, Petitioning for Land: The Petitions of First Peoples of Modern British Colonies is noted by Yale University, the Yale Indian Papers Project, for its use of a robust set of primary source materials to increase the ‘scholarly literature on the history and culture’ of First Peoples of New England.
https://campuspress.yale.edu/yipp/2018-in-review/
Invited Speaker
2019 Invited speaker to address the Legal Studies Association Annual Legal Studies Teacher Conference to improve student teachers’ understandings of First Nations Global history and influence teachers from NSW, Singapore and Hong Kong.
2016 Invited commentator for media commentary on incarceration of Indigenous youth at the Don Dale Detention Centre
2015 Invited expert speaker on Indigenous visual history to students and faculty members of the social sciences of Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, USA at Sydney University.
2011 Invited speaker to the Inside Australia Program for the University of Toronto focusing on five key areas relating to Indigenous history and culture of Indigenous Australia in comparative context with Canadian First Nations.
In the media
2020 Crikey News interview about the comparative power of petitions and the e-petition calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media empire which recorded 501,876 signature and was tabled in parliament.
2014 Invited expert panelist at the University of Sydney Media Briefing of international journalists representing the Foreign Correspondents Association on the Recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution and the political and historical context of Indigenous Australian identity and political rights within the context of Indigenous Australian constitutional rights.