39 Australian historians

Carolyn Allport was an Australian historian, unionist and activist.

Edmund la Touche Armstrong (1864–1946) was an Australian historian and librarian.

Craig G. Benjamin is an Australian-American historian who is professor of history in the Frederik J. Meijer Honors College at Grand Valley State University, where he teaches East Asian civilization, big history, ancient Central Asian history, and world history historiography. In 2014 and 2015 he served as President of the World History Association.

Peter Christopher is an Australian author and photographer who writes about shipwrecks and riverboats. He is also a Director of the not for profit organisation, Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Ltd (CSCOAL), set up to save the 1864 clipper ship, City of Adelaide.

Inga Clendinnen, was an Australian author, historian, anthropologist, and academic.

Sir Timothy Augustine Coghlan was an Australian statistician, engineer and diplomat. He held the post of New South Wales government statistician for 19 years, and served various periods as Agent-General for New South Wales in London from 1905 to his death in 1926.

George Collingridge (1847–1931) was an Australian writer and illustrator best known today for his early assertions of Portuguese discovery of Australia in the 16th century.

Ann Curthoys, is an Australian historian and academic.

Edward Duyker is an Australian historian, biographer and author born in Melbourne.

Grant Richard James Evans was an Australian anthropologist and historian notable for his works on Laos.

Rupert Gerritsen (RON) was an Australian historian and a noted authority on Indigenous Australian prehistory. Coupled with his work on early Australian cartography, he played an influential part in re-charting Australian history prior to its settlement by the British in 1788, and noted evidence of agriculture and settlements on the continent before the arrival of settlers.

Alan David Gilbert AO was an Australian historian and academic administrator who was until June 2010 the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester. During his tenure (1996–2004) as vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, he pushed for and established Melbourne University Private, a private university offshoot which ultimately failed. This, and his well-known controversial views on private funding of universities, led to Richard Davis in 2002 dubbing him the "doyen of economically rationalist vice-chancellors".

Lionel Arthur Gilbert was an Australian historian, author, curator, lecturer, and biographer, specializing in applied, natural, and local history. Born in Burwood, New South Wales, he studied at Sydney Teachers College and, beginning in 1946, worked as a teacher and later a headmaster in state schools in various locations around New South Wales until 1961. In 1963 Gilbert graduated from the University of New England with a Bachelor of Arts in History. That same year, he was appointed a lecturer and curator at the Armidale Teachers' College Museum of Education, in which capacity he served until his retirement in 1984, overseeing several expansions of the museum and establishment of a historical research centre.

George Helon, also known under the pen names George Wieslaw Helon and Jerzy Wieslaw Helon, is an Australian author, businessman, and historian of Polish descent. Helon is on the board of directors of the Polish Nobility Association Foundation.

John Bradley Hirst, was an Australian historian and social commentator. He taught at La Trobe University from 1968 until his retirement in 2006, edited Historical Studies—Australia's leading historical journal—from 1977 to 1980, and also served on the boards of Film Australia and the National Museum of Australia. He has been described as an "historian, public intellectual, and active citizen". He wrote widely on Australian history and society, publishing two well-received books about colonial New South Wales. Hirst also frequently published opinion pieces in the media.

Jennifer Jane Hocking, is a political scientist and biographer. She is the inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow with the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University, Emeritus Professor at Monash University, and former Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. Her work is in two key areas, counter-terrorism and Australian political biography. In both areas she explores Australian democratic practice, the relationship between the arms of government, and aspects of Australian political history. Her research into the life of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam uncovered significant new material on the role of High Court justice Sir Anthony Mason in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. This has been described as "a discovery of historical importance". Since 2001 Hocking has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lionel Murphy Foundation.

John Winston Howard is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th Prime Minister of Australia (1996-2007) and Leader of the Liberal Party. His nearly twelve-year tenure as Prime Minister is the second-longest in history, behind only Sir Robert Menzies, who served for eighteen non-consecutive years. He has also been the oldest living former Australian Prime Minister since the death of Bob Hawke in 2019.

Jacqueline Gail "Jackie" Huggins is an Aboriginal Australian author, historian, academic and advocate for the rights of Indigenous Australians. She is a Bidjara/Pitjara, Birri Gubba and Juru woman from Queensland.

Robert Ian Jack (1935–2019) FRHistS, FRAHS, was an Australian historian, archivist, heritage specialist, industrial archaeologist, and musician.

Richard “Dick” Glyn Kimber is an Australian historian and author who has written extensively on the history, art, culture and wildlife of Central Australia. He has published several books, the best known of which is Man From Arltunga: Walter Smith, Australian Bushman as well as more than 100 articles and essays. Kimber is also a Member of the Order of Australia.

Ruby Langford Ginibi was an acclaimed Bundjalung author, historian and lecturer on Aboriginal history, culture and politics.

Jost Andreas Loewe is a German-born priest in the Anglican Church of Australia. He has served as the 15th Dean of Melbourne since 2012, the second-youngest dean in the history of the diocese.

George Ettienne Loyau was an English-born traveller, poet and historian in Australia, best known as the author and editor of Notable South Australians.

Dr Lauren Mackay is an historian, author, and lecturer specializing in the Tudor period and the broader Early Modern world, and whose focus of study goes beyond familiar historical figures to the customs and diplomacy of the 16th Century. Mackay's areas of research encompass medieval and early modern politics, renaissance and reformation, diplomacy, humanism, as well as early modern literature and culture.

Margaret Mary Manion is an Australian art historian and curator recognised internationally for her scholarship on the art of the illuminated manuscript. She has published on Medieval and Renaissance liturgical and devotional works, in particular, on Books of Hours – the Wharncliffe Hours, the Aspremont-Kievraing Hours, the Très Riches Heures. She was instrumental in cataloguing Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts in Australian and New Zealand collections. She was Herald Chair Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne from 1979 to 1995, also serving as Deputy Dean and Acting Dean in the Faculty of Arts, Associate Dean for Research, Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1985 to 1988, and in 1987, the first woman to chair the University's Academic Board.

Percy Joseph Marks was an Australian Jewish solicitor and historian.

Ross McMullin is an Australian historian who has written a number of books on political and social history, as well as several biographies.

Anthony Crothers Milner AM is an Australian historian of Southeast Asia – concerned primarily with the history of ideas – and a commentator on Australia-Asia relationships. His writings on Malay history and society – and the history of Islam in Southeast Asia – include Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (1982), an interdisciplinary (history/anthropology) study, published in a new edition in 2016. He is also co-editor of the series of volumes, Australia in Asia, which examine the role of culture and values in Australia-Asia relationships; and of the Asialink report on Australia-ASEAN relations, Our Place in the Asian Century: Southeast Asia as the Third Way (2012). Milner is professorial fellow and international director at Asialink, The University of Melbourne, and visiting professor at the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya. He was dean of Asian studies at the Australian National University (1996–2005), and Basham Professor of Asian History (1924-2013). He is now emeritus professor of the Australian National University.

Joyce Nicholson was an Australian author and business woman.

Arthur Nelson Patrick was a Seventh-day Adventist theologian and historian. At the time of death, he was an honorary senior research fellow at Avondale College in New South Wales, Australia. He also worked in pastoral ministry, evangelism, religion teaching, academic administration, and hospital chaplaincy for the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Margaret Reeson is an Australian historian, biographer, and author, and prominent leader of the Uniting Church in Australia.

Alfred Thomas Saunders was an accountant and amateur historian of the early days of South Australia, with a particular interest in the sea and River Murray. Working with his own remarkable collection of chronological but un-indexed notes, an incredible memory and a passion for facts clearly stated, he came to be regarded as South Australia's unofficial historian. By engaging in controversy, he attracted a wide following. On many occasions he challenged writings by famous writers and public figures, including Joseph Conrad, who became something of a friend.

Alan Geoffrey Serle, known as Geoff, was an Australian historian, who is best known for his books on the colony of Victoria; The Golden Age (1963) and The Rush to be Rich (1971) and his biographies of John Monash, John Curtin and Robin Boyd.

Bernard William Smith was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, considered the founding father of Australian art history, and one of the country's most important thinkers. His book Place, Taste and Tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788 is a key text in Australian art history, and influence on Robert Hughes. Smith was associated with the Communist Party of Australia, and after leaving the party remained a prominent left-wing intellectual and Marxist thinker. Following the death of his wife in 1989, he sold much of their art collection to establish, the Kate Challis RAKA, one of the first prizes in the country for Indigenous artists and writers.

James Dugold Somerville, born in Glasgow, was a South Australian historian with a special interest in Eyre's Peninsula, especially Port Lincoln.

Professor emeritus Hugh Stretton AC was an Australian historian who wrote books on politics, urban planning and economics, and a Rhodes Scholar. He was a key figure in the development and implementation of government policies affecting cities, particularly during the Whitlam Government.

Meta Truscott was an Australian diarist and Ashgrove historian. For over 80 years, she wrote a daily diary and collected scrapbooks, with pasted-in newspaper clippings and other ephemera (1934–2014). The diaries record the day-to-day life of a woman who had lived in Queensland all her life. The collection is in the Fryer Library, University of Queensland.

David Robert Walker is an Australian academic historian who has been the professor of Australian studies at Deakin University since 1991. He is a leading authority in the study of Australian perceptions of Asia.

Thomas Worsnop was an Australian colonial militia, historian, local government official and town clerk. Worsnop was born in Wortley, Yorkshire, England and died in North Adelaide, South Australia.