Our people

Associate Professor Shino Konishi

Associate Professor, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences

Areas of expertise: Aboriginal history; comparative Indigenous histories; Indigenous biography and life-writing; Indigenous labour history; exploration history; history of travel; imperial and colonial collecting; gender history

HDR supervisor accreditation status: Full

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2771-9555

Phone: +61 3 9953 3221

Email: Shino.Konishi@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Melbourne Campus

Shino Konishi is a historian based in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the author of The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012), and a series of publications on Aboriginal history. In collaboration with the Australian Dictionary of Biography she leads the ARC project ‘An Australian Dictionary of Biography’. Shino descends from the Yawuru people of Broome, Western Australia.

Select publications

• S. Konishi, The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World, Pickering and Chatto, London, 2012, 254pp.
• S. Konishi, M. Nugent and T. Shellam (eds), Indigenous Intermediaries: New Perspectives on the Exploration Archives, Aboriginal History and ANU Press, Canberra, 2015, 222pp.
• T. Shellam, M. Nugent, S. Konishi, and A. Cadzow (eds), Brokers and Boundaries: Colonial Exploration and Indigenous Territory, Aboriginal History and ANU Press, Canberra, 2016, 226pp.
• S. Konishi, ‘J.C. Byrne, Entrepreneurial Imperialism and the Question of Indigenous Rights’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 48, iss. 6 (2020), pp. 981-1010. DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2020.1765533
• S. Konishi, ‘Feeling the Past: Indigenous History and Emotions’, Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. 44, no. 2, 2020, pp. 135-139. DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2020.1753224
• S. Konishi, ‘First Nations scholars, settler colonial studies, and Indigenous history’, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2019, pp. 285-304. DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2019.1620300
• S. Konishi, ‘Making connections and attachments: challenging biographies of nineteenth-­‐century indigenous individuals’, in Noelani Arista, Daniel Justice, and Alice Te Punga Somerville (eds), ‘Conversations in Indigenous Biography’, special edition of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, 2016, pp. 410-26.

Projects

• ARC Indigenous Discovery Fellowship, $732,704 (‘An Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography’, 2017-2022), Lead CI.
• ARC Linkage, $750, 192 (‘Collecting the West: How collections create Western Australia’, 2016-­‐2019), CI.
• ‘Exploring the Middle Ground: New Histories of Cross-­‐Cultural Encounters in Australian Maritime and Land Exploration’, ARC Discovery Grant, $150,000 (‘Exploring the Middle Ground: New Histories of Cross-­‐Cultural Encounters in Australian Maritime and Land Exploration’, 2010-2012), Lead CI.
• ARC Discovery Indigenous Research Development Grant, $155,000 (‘Through Travelers’ Eyes: Foreign Observations of Aboriginal People and British Colonisation, 1800-­‐1850’, 2010-2012), Sole CI.

Accolades and awards

• Short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Australian History Award, 2013
• Visiting Fellowship, Institute for Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 2012

Appointments and affiliations

• General Editor, Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2017-2023.
• Member, InASA Executive Committee, 2021-2022.
• Council Member, National Trust, Western Australia, 2020-2022.
• Member, National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network, 2013 -­‐ current
• Member, Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2005-­‐ current

Editorial roles

• Editorial Board Member, Labour History, 2020-2024.
• Editorial Board Member, Journal of Australian Studies, 2019-current.
• Editorial Board Member, ab-Original, 2016-current
• Editorial Board Member, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2015-­‐ current.
• Editor, Aboriginal History, 2010-2014.

Public engagement

• A. Patterson, A. Witcomb, G. Sculthorpe, S. Konishi, and T. Shellam, ‘Friday Essay: museum objects that tell a story of colonialism and its legacy’, The Conversation, 27 November, 2020.
• S. Konishi, ‘What can we learn from the first smallpox epidemic and its effect on Aboriginal people’, COVID-19: Indigenous Perspectives, UWA Public Policy Institute, 17 June, 2020.
• S. Konishi, ‘Captain Cook wanted to introduce British justice to Indigenous people. Instead, he became increasingly cruel and violent’, The Conversation, 29 April, 2020 [Republished in Molly Glassey (ed.), 2020: The Year That Changed Us, Thames & Hudson, Port Melbourne, 2020, pp. 156-60.]
• ‘Through French Eyes: Aboriginal people and cultures in Western Australia, 1801-1818’, Art of Science Exhibition Public Lecture, Western Australian Museum, 25 November 2018.
•  ‘Indigenous Lives and the Australian Dictionary of Biography’, Noel Butlin Archives Annual Lecture, Australian National University, 16 October 2017.
• ‘“After the Referendum, … the emotional things changed”: Indigenous Memories of the 1967 Referendum’, 2017 History Council of Western Australia Lecture, State Library of Western Australia, 21 September 2017.
• S. Konishi, ‘The Aboriginal Huts of Eendracht’s Land’ [online], Western Australian Museum, 2016.