Rate My Professor Katherine Ellinghaus

Professor Katherine Ellinghaus serves as Professor of History in the Department of Archaeology and History, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, at La Trobe University. She teaches Australian history, including the subject Histories of Indigenous Resistance. Ellinghaus earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne, with a thesis entitled Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Aboriginal Men in the United States and Australia, 1887-1937. Her academic career at La Trobe University includes prior roles as Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Archaeology and History. She was appointed Professor of History effective 2019.

Ellinghaus's research focuses on Indigenous Australian history, with particular emphasis on assimilation policies, Aboriginal exemption certificates, interracial relationships, and comparative analyses with Native American assimilation experiences. Key publications include the monograph Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy (University of Nebraska Press, 2011), which examines blood quantum policies; Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Aboriginal Men in the United States and Australia, 1887-1937 (University of Nebraska Press, 2006), adapted from her doctoral work; and Enlightened Aboriginal Futures (2024). Notable articles encompass Mind the Gap: Micromobility, Counternetworks and Everyday Resistance in the Northern Territory in 1951 (2018), Imperial Literacy, Choice and F.W. Albrecht's Lutheran Experiments in Aboriginal Education in Post-war Central Australia (2023), and Spirit of Place: The Critical Case for Site Visits in the Construction of Indigenous Australian Histories (2023). Her scholarship has garnered over 930 citations according to Google Scholar metrics.

Ellinghaus has secured significant funding, including a $1 million Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant in 2024 for the Ngura Ninti initiative to produce Aboriginal-led history books, in collaboration with Professor Barry Judd and Emeritus Professor Richard Broome. She contributed as an expert witness to the Yoorrook Justice Commission on topics of massacres and dispossession. Additional projects include Understanding Aboriginal Exemption: The Promise of Everyday Freedoms and Choices (2021) and a study tracing the role of Yorta Yorta people in fruit picking in Victoria's Goulburn Valley. Her contributions extend to object-based learning in history teaching and repatriation efforts with the University of Melbourne.