Rate My Professor Kirsten McKenzie

McKenzie's research focuses on the history of colonial Australia, the transnational lives of marginal historical characters, and key themes including scandal, identity, social status, political liberties, and constitutional change. Her major publications include the books Scandal in the Colonies (2004), which examines gossip and reputation in Sydney and Cape Town; A Swindler’s Progress: Nobles and Convicts in the Age of Liberty (2009); Imperial Underworld: An Escaped Convict and the Shadow Empire (2016); the co-edited volume Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions: A Global History, c. 1750–1830 (2024); and Inquiring into Empire: Colonial Commissions and British Imperial Reform, 1819–1833 (2025), the first history of British imperial investigations post-Waterloo. Her scholarship has received accolades such as the Crawford Medal from the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Through her work, McKenzie illuminates the intersections of law, labor, and subjecthood in imperial contexts, contributing significantly to understandings of colonial societies and British imperial reform.