Challenging colonialism: Australians who helped us embrace human equality

This project traces how ideas of human rights and equality gained ground in Australia in the 1940s-1960s. It uses group biography to discover how ten influential thinkers and activists challenged social structures based on racial inequality. While we have made great strides in prohibiting discrimination, our society still bears legacies of colonialism. The recent 50th anniversary of the remarkable Aboriginal Tent Embassy shows how much there is still to do. This project will create new knowledge about how key progress occurred. This knowledge will be publicly shared to enhance Australians understanding of our national development and the links between intellectual and social change. Its innovation lies in tracing the connections among its diverse subjects: how their interactions brought together the realms of internationalism, organisation, advocacy, literature and activism to change general thinking. Understanding how a fundamental sea-change occurred in the mid