I completed my BA (Hons) at the University of Natal, South Africa and my MA and PhD at Queen's University at Kingston, Canada. I teach global history; South African, African and British imperial history; and the history of race and racism. My research interests include the evolution of immigration restriction legislation in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as race, gender and the law in nineteenth and twentieth century South Africa. I am currently working with a team of researchers on an ARC-funded project that aims to bring Australia into the global history of slavery by exploring the legacies of British slavery in Western Australia.

I am a CI on the ARC Discovery Project 'Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery' May 2020-May 2023. This project aims to bring Australia into the global history of slavery by exploring the legacies of British slavery in Western Australia. Through developing innovative methods for biographical research and digital mapping, it will trace the movement of capital, people and culture from slave-owning Britain to WA, and produce a new history of the continuing impact of slavery wealth in shaping colonial immigration, investment, and law. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced capacity to build international disciplinary collaborations, new research methods, and a major national online exhibition. Benefits include a radically new perspective on Australian history and abolition in the present, with major public outcomes.

In addition to publishing widely on South African, Australian and British imperial history in scholarly journals (see research profile) I am the author of Empire and Asian Migration: Sovereignty, Immigration Restriction and Protest in the British Settler Colonies, 1888–1907 (UWAP, 2018) and Government House and Western Australian Society, 1829-2009 (UWAP, 2011). The latter book was shortlisted for the 2011 WA Premier’s Book Awards (WA History) and received a Special Commendation, 2012 Margaret Medcalf Award. In 2020 I was awarded the annual Marian Quartly Prize for 'The Mrs Freer case revisited: marriage, morality and the state in interwar Australia,’ History Australia 16.3 (2019).