Doors open at 5:30pm with the lecture beginning at 6:00pm. The evening will conclude around 8pm.

Dr Janelle Evans is a Dharug woman, internationally recognised artist, and historian of early colonial Sydney. Her contemporary art practice and filmmaking are grounded in rigorous research into print and photographic histories. Her work critically examines early colonial representations of first contact encounters in Australia, with particular attention to nineteenth-century visual and pictorial portrayals of Aboriginal women. Influenced by the scholarship of Kay Schaffer and Jane Lydon, Dr Evans interrogates the ways historical photographs and newspaper accounts were constructed to fabricate myths of transgressiveness-narratives that continue to shape Australian cultural consciousness. She was the first Fine Art postgraduate to be awarded the H.S. Carslaw Memorial Scholarship to study at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and is also a recipient of the Charles Perkins AO Memorial Prize as well as a finalist in the University of Sydney's Graduate Medal. Dr Evans will be our first Indigenous speaker since the commencement of the Western Civilisation Program in 2021.

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