Malcolm Allbrook is Managing Editor with the Australian Dictionary of Biography, a Senior Lecturer in the School of History, Australian National University, and editor of the Australian Journal of Biography and History. He joined the ADB in 2014 after working as a Research Associate in the School of History at the ANU between 2011 and 2014. His first degree was in Classics and Ancient History, followed by employment in the public sector in Western Australia and then senior research and management positions with Aboriginal organizations, firstly the Kimberley Land Council in Derby (1993 – 1998) and then the Yamatji Marlpa Land and Sea Council, the native title representative body for the Murchison, Gascoyne and Pilbara regions.

He completed a PhD at Griffith University in 2009 with a thesis ‘Imperial Family: the Prinseps, Empire and Colonial Government in India and Australia’ which was published as Henry Prinsep's Empire: Framing a Distant Colony by ANU Press in 2014. Before joining the ANU, he worked as a historian and exhibition curator, chiefly with Aboriginal organizations throughout Western Australia. In 2013, with the Kimberley Aboriginal elder John Darraga Watson, he published Never Stand Still: Life, land and politics in the Kimberley. He was part of a team that curated ‘Burlganya Wanggaya’, an exhibition of Aboriginal history and culture in Carnarvon, Western Australia, which was awarded the MAGNA award for best permanent exhibition in 2012. in 2017 he co-authored a collaborative community history of the Worrorra people of the Dambimangari native title lands: Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee: The creation, history and people of Dambeemahgaddee country (Fremantle Press, 2017). The same year, with Mary Anne Jebb, he published Carlotta's Perth: Memories of a Colonial Childhood (City of Perth, 2017). In 2021 he published, with Sophie Scott-Brown, Family History and Historians in Australia and New Zealand: Related Histories (Routledge, 2021). He is also the author of numerous articles and ADB biographies, notably of the former governor-general and cabinet minister Sir Paul Hasluck, and the historian and writer Dame Mary Durack.

BA Hons (1977) University of Western Australia PhD (2008) Griffith University

Malcolm Allbrook’s research interests include:

Australian history

Colonial and transnational histories in the Indian Ocean region, the formal and informal networks connecting individuals and families around the oceanic sphere, and the diverse contexts in which they functioned and were sustained;

Indigenous histories, including collaborative ways to research and present community histories using voice, sound, photographic and filmic imagery.

Biography and life writing, particularly of those less visible in national and landscape narratives, and the use of the range of documentary source materials, including letters and journals, paintings and photographs, and oral histories.

Landscape history and the deep past, particularly issues connected with biography and life writing of ancient lives.