Jane Lydon

Jane Lydon’s research centres upon Australia’s colonial past and its legacies in the present. She is interested in the ways that popular and especially visual culture has shaped ideas and debates about race, identity and culture that persist today. In particular, she is concerned with the history of Australia’s engagement with anti-slavery, humanitarianism, and ultimately human rights. Her work has contributed to decolonizing heritage and academic practice, with a strong impact on debates regarding colonialism and Australian legacies of imperialism and slavery. Her analysis of issues such as Australian citizenship through visual culture has enabled communication with a very wide audience.

Finalist, for Anti-slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land? in the 2022 Paul E. Lovejoy Prize ‘for excellence and originality in a major work on any theme related to global slavery’. 

‘Slavery and Australian Colonisation’, Histories of the Present, History Workshop Journal companion piece, March 11, 2021. 

This accompanies “A Secret Longing for a Trade in Human Flesh: the Decline of British Slavery and the Making of the Settler Colonies” in issue 90 of History Workshop Journal

with Emma Christopher, Ann Curthoys, Alan Lester, and Nikita Vanderbyl, ‘No slavery in Australia? The dark legacies of slave ownership persist long after abolition’

ABC Religion and ethics, ‘How one photo brings Australia’s history of colonial violence into focus’

Matariki Lecture "Imperial Emotions: Empathy, politics and global networks", Otago University, 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3w5n-yiPso

Coordinator in 2022: 

• Looking for Australia (HIST2015)

• Who do we think we are? Doing Family History (HIST2021)

• From Slavery to Settler Colonialism: Labour, Land and Profit (HIST4102)

Cultural history of human rights, humanitarianism and empire

Australian Legacies of British Slavery

Australian colonial visual cultures

Heritage: the colonial past in the present

CURRENT

(CI) 'Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery' (with Martens, J., Arthur, P., Laidlaw, Z., Hall, C., McClelland, K. & Lester, A.) (ARC DP200100094 2020-2022)

(CI) 'Envisaging Citizenship: Australian Histories and Global Connections' (with A. Nettelbeck, M.Miles and F.Anderson) (ARC DP200100088 2020-2022)

(Associate Partner) ‘Digital Heritage in Cultural Conflicts’, JPICultural Heritage, Digital Heritage, Led by Prof Gil Pasternak, Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, UK.(€550,000, 2018-2021)

• Berndt Research Foundation Committee (2022-)

• History Advisory Panel, Museum of Chinese Australia (2021-2023)

• Committee, Australian Historical Association 

• Editorial Board, Labour History (2021-)

• Advisory Board, Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies. Postgraduate-run. (2016-)

• Editorial Board, History of Photography (2016-2021)

• Editorial Board, Australasian Historical Archaeology