Rate My Professor Shino Konishi

Shino Konishi is a Yawuru historian and Associate Professor in the School of Humanities' Discipline of History and the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia, where she is also an ARC Future Fellow and Indigenous Studies Head of Section. She obtained her BA (Hons) with University Medal from the University of Sydney in 1999 and PhD in History in 2007. Her academic interests include Indigenous and colonial histories, cross-cultural encounters in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Australia, histories of European exploration particularly French voyages in Australia and the Pacific, European and colonial representations of Aboriginal people and gender relations, Indigenous labour history, biography, life-writing, and the history of emotions.

Her professional career spans multiple prestigious institutions. Konishi served as Associate Lecturer at the Aboriginal Research and Resource Centre, University of New South Wales (2002-2003), and Lecturer at the Koori Centre, University of Sydney (2003-2008). She held a Research Fellowship at the National Museum of Australia (2008) and a Fellowship at the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National University (2008-2014). At UWA, she progressed from Senior Lecturer (2014-2021) to her current role, with an interim Associate Professorship at Australian Catholic University (2021-2024). Notable awards include election as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (2021), ARC Discovery Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award Fellowship (2017), ARC Future Fellowship for 'An Aboriginal History of Western Australia' (2025-2028), Battye Fellowship at the State Library of Western Australia (2024), and shared Margaret Medcalf and History Council of Western Australia Awards (2023).

Konishi's influential publications feature the book The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012) and co-authored The Lives and Legacies of a Carceral Island: A Biographical History of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island (2022). She is co-editor of forthcoming Reframing Indigenous Biography (2025), Volume 3 (1750-1914) of The Cambridge History of Colonialism and Decolonization, and Volume 4 (Skybreakers, 1500-1800) of The Bloomsbury Cultural History of Oceania. As lead Chief Investigator for the ARC-funded 'An Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography' (2017-2023), her work has advanced Indigenous biographical histories, complemented by keynote addresses at national and international conferences.