Penny Edmonds

Penny Edmonds is Matthew Flinders Professor of History in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia. She is a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2012-2017).

Penny has qualifications in history and heritage studies. Her research is distinguished by over two decades of creative and interdisciplinary work in the areas of British empire and settler colonialism, Australian Indigenous and settler histories, reconciliation, humanitarianism, transnational Australian and Pacific-region histories, museums and heritage.

Recent publications include Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony: Economies of Dispossession around the Pacific Rim (co-edited with Amanda Nettelbeck, Palgrave, 2018) and the monograph Settler Colonialism and Reconciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings (Palgrave, 2016).

Penny has professional experience in the cultural heritage and museum sector, and has worked at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, and Museum Victoria, Melbourne. More recently, as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Penny was a key member of the working group that wrote and delivered the landmark apology to Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples on behalf of the organisation in February 2021.

Penny's research is supported by grants from the Australian Research Council.