Dr Sam Furphy

Sam Furphy is a historian based in the National Centre of Biography, School of History, with expertise in Australian colonial history, Aboriginal history, British imperial history, and biography. He works as a research editor for the Australian Dictionary of Biography and was a recipient (2014-17) of an Australian Research Council early career fellowship. His recent research has focussed on Indigenous Australian experiences of the home front during the world wars, and Aboriginal protectors in early colonial Australasia. He was the convenor of the 2018 Australian Historical Association Conference.

Sam is the author of Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History (2013), a biography of a pastoralist, stock inspector, memoirist and ethnologist, whose writings were influential in the Yorta Yorta native title case (1994-2001). He has edited or co-edited three books, most recently Aboriginal Protection and Its Intermediaries in Britain’s Antipodean Colonies (with Amanda Nettelbeck, 2019). Before joining the National Centre of Biography, he worked as a professional historian, writing several commissioned histories including Australian of the Year Awards: A Fiftieth Anniversary History (2010).

BA (Hons), MA, PhD (Melbourne)