Prof Martin Thomas

Martin Thomas did his BA at the University of Sydney and his doctorate at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has written/edited ten scholarly books. He is also a documentary maker and oral historian. He publishes in the areas of Australian and trans-national cultural history especially as it relates to perceptions of place, representations of landscape, and narratives of cross-cultural encounter. He has researched extensively on early Australian anthropology and on the history of exploration. Since the release of his edited book Expedition into Empire (Routledge 2014) he has become widely known for his work on the expedition as a socio-cultural form. His critical engagement with histories of exploration has involved collaborative research with Indigenous communities, especially in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. This has opened new perspectives on how expeditions are understood by cultures that were allegedly ‘explored’ by outsiders.

Thomas is a committed advocate for the repatriation of Indigenous ancestral remains that were  stolen or collected in the name of science. He has done detailed research on the scientific collecting of human remains and its impact upon Indigenous beliefs about the spirit world and the afterlife.

His publications and documentaries include This is Jimmie Barker (ABC Radio National, 2000) (winner of the NSW Premier’s Audiovisual History Prize),  The Artificial Horizon: Imagining the Blue Mountains (2003) (winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Prize for Cultural Criticism), The Many Worlds of R. H. Mathews (2011) (winner of the National Biography Award of Australia), ‘Because It’s Your Country’ (2013) (winner of the Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay), and Etched in Bone (co-produced with Béatrice Bijon: Red Lily Productions/Ronin Films, 2018) (shortlisted for a NSW Premier’s History Award and the CHASS Prize for Distinctive Work). Thomas is the editor of A Cultural History of Exploration in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury 2024). His next book, The Clever Men, is a monograph on the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land which he has been investigating for many years. The book is in-press with Allen & Unwin for publication mid-2025.

Martin Thomas’ research has been supported by the Australian Research Council (four awards including Postdoctoral and Future fellowships), the Mellon Foundation, Screen Australia, and the Australia Council for the Arts. He has held visiting appointments in the US and Europe: Visiting Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Keith Cameron Professor of Australian History at University College Dublin; and Visiting Co-Director of the Menzies Australia Institute at King’s College London.

He teaches and supervises in the areas of exploration history, Australian colonial/postcolonial history, historical writing, oral history, public history, and Indigenous history. He is the Convenor of the School of History’s Higher Degree by Research program.

BA (Hons), Sydney PhD, University of Technology, Sydney

perception and representation of landscape; history and philosophy of place; cross-cultural histories in Australia; Aboriginal studies; legacy of the Australian anthropologist R.H. Mathews; Visual and auditory culture; The American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948.