Professor Anna Johnston
Professor & Director of Indigenous Engagement
School of Communication and Arts
Affiliate Associate Professor of Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Student Centre - Herston
Affiliate of Centre of Architecture, Theory, Culture, and History
Centre of Architecture, Theory, Criticism and History
Affiliate of Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
+61 7 336 53215
Researcher biography
Anna Johnston is Professor in English Literature in the School of Communication and Arts, and was Deputy Director of UQ's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2018-20. Anna worked at the University of Tasmania, where she was Director of the Centre for Colonialism and Its Aftermath (2013-16) and an Australian Research Council Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow (2007-14). In 2014-15, Anna was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo.
In 2020, Anna completed her ARC Future Fellowship: "The Laboratory of Modernity: Knowledge Formation and the Australian Settler Colonies (1788-1900)." This major project traced how knowledge created in the early Australian colonies was circulated by print culture through imperial networks. From 2016-2020, Anna was also a member of the multi-institutional ARC grant "Intimacy and violence in Anglo Pacific Rim settler colonial societies, 1830-1930" (University of Newcastle), in which she focused on evangelical missionaries and colonial settlers who studied Indigenous languages in Australia and the Pacific. For a recent overview of this project, see UQ's HASS Researchers.
With Sandra Philips, Anna leads UQ's Australian Studies Research Node at UQ (2020-).
Anna has published widely in the field of colonial and postcolonial studies, focussing on literary and cultural history: her new monograph The Antipodean Laboratory: Making Colonial Knowledge, 1770-1870 will be published in October 2023 (CUP). An edited collection with Em. Professor Elizabeth Webby (Sydney University) Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Writing from the Colonial Frontier (Sydney University Press 2021) was published in the Sydney Studies in Australian Literature series. She has particular interests in settler colonialism, travel writing, and missionary writing and empire.
Anna is an experienced Masters and PhD supervisor, with 23 HDR completions. She is available to supervise topics on Australian literature (past and present), colonial and postcolonial world literature and cultural history, and travel writing, life writing, and print culture and book history studies. You can read about Anna's award-winning students here, including:
- Samantha Schraag, George Essex Evans Honours Scholarship, 2020
- Phoebe King, Alfred Midgely Postgraduate Scholarship, 2020
- Melissa Thorne, Sydney Review of Books Emerging Critic Fellowship, 2019
From 2023, Anna is the Director of Indigenous Engagement for the School of Communication and Arts. She is also the 2022 John Oxley Library Honorary Fellow at the State Libary of Quensland.
Books
Johnston, Anna (2023). The antipodean laboratory: making colonial knowledge, 1770-1870. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781009186896
Rolls, Mitchell and Johnston, Anna (2016). Travelling home, Walkabout Magazine and mid-twentieth-century Australia. London, United Kingdom: Anthem Press.
Johnston, Anna (2011). The Paper War: Morality, Print Culture, and Power in Colonial New South Wales. Crawley, WA, Australia: University of Western Australia.
Johnston, Anna (2003). Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800-1860. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511550324
Book Chapters
Johnston, Anna (2023). Exile and elegy: Eliza Hamilton Dunlop and colonial verse. Victorian verse: The poetics of everyday life. (pp. 103-121) edited by Lee Behlman and Olivia Loksing Moy. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-29696-3_6
Johnston, Anna (2023). Mapping Massacres: Art, History and Artefacts in Judy Watson’s the names of places. Colonialism, Violence and Memory in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. (pp. 207-216) edited by Angela Wanhalla, Lyndall Ryan and Camille Nurka. Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago University Press.
Johnston, Anna (2022). Europe’s Other? Academic Discourse on the Pacific as a Cultural Space. The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. (pp. 70-97) Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108226875.006
Johnston, Anna and Webby, Elizabeth (2021). “Proud of Contributing Its Quota to the Original Literature of the Colony”: An Introduction to Eliza Hamilton Dunlop and Her Writing. Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Writing from the Colonial Frontier. (pp. 1-23) edited by Anna Johnston and Elizabeth Webby. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney University PRess.
Johnston, Anna (2021). The Poetry of the Archive: Locating Eliza Hamilton Dunlop. Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Writing from the Colonial Frontier. (pp. 25-50) edited by Anna Johnston and Elizabeth Webby. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Sydney University Press.
Johnston, Anna (2019). Australian travel writing. The Cambridge history of travel writing. (pp. 267-282) Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781316556740.018
Johnston, Anna (2018). Travel magazines and settler (post) colonialism. The Cambridge companion to postcolonial travel writing. (pp. 173-187) Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781316597712.013
Johnston, Anna (2018). 'The Aboriginal Mother': poetry and politics. Remembering the Myall Creek massacre. (pp. 40-46) edited by Jane Lydon and Lyndall Ryan. Kensington, NSW, Australia: NewSouth Publishing.
Johnston, Anna (2018). Mrs Milson's wordlist: Eliza Hamilton Dunlop and the intimacy of linguistic work. Intimacies of violence in the settler colony: economies of dispossession around the Pacific Rim. (pp. 225-247) edited by Penelope Edmonds and Amanda Nettelbeck. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-76231-9_11
Johnston, Anna (2018). “Our Antipodes”: settler colonial environments in Victorian travel writing. Victorian environments: acclimatizing to change in British domestic and colonial culture. (pp. 57-75) edited by Grace Moore and Michael J. Smith. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-57337-7_4
Johnston, Anna (2017). Australian travel writing, 1900–1960. In Oxford research encyclopedia of literature () Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.312
Crane, Ralph and Johnston, Anna (2017). How to dine in India: Flora Annie Steel's The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook and the Anglo-Indian imagination. Flora Annie Steel: a critical study of an unconventional memsahib. (pp. 161-182) edited by Susmita Roye. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press.
Johnston, Anna (2016). Travelling the Tasman World: Travel Writing and Narratives of Transit. New Zealand’s Empire. (pp. 71-88) edited by Katie Pickles and Catharine Coleborne. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press. doi: 10.7228/manchester/9780719091537.003.0004
Johnston, Anna (2013). The bible trade: Commerce and christianity in the Pacific. Economies of Representation, 1790-2000: Colonialism and Commerce. (pp. 31-40) Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Crane, Ralph and Johnston, Anna (2013). Administering domestic space: Flora Annie Steel's The complete Indian housekeeper and cook. Empire calling: administering colonial Australasia and India. (pp. 120-132) edited by Crane, Ralph, Johnston, Anna and Vijayasree, C.. New Delhi, India: Foundation Books. doi: 10.1017/CBO9789382264798.008
Johnston, Anna (2013). ‘Greater Britain’: Late Imperial Travel Writing and the Settler Colonies. Where All Things Are Possible: Oceania, the East and the Victorian Imagination. (pp. 31-43) edited by Richard D. Fulton and Peter H. Hoffenberg. Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate. doi: 10.4324/9781315598710-4
Johnston, Anna (2013). 1943: Ernestine Hill’s The Great Australian Loneliness is packed into US Armed Service kitbags. Telling Stories: Australian Literary Cultures 1935-2010. (pp. 84-90) edited by Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University Press.
Johnston, Anna and Crane, Ralph (2013). Introduction: administering colonial Australasia and India. Empire calling: administering colonial Australasia and India. (pp. vii-xiv) edited by Ralph Crane, Anna Johnston and C. Vijayasree. Delhi, India: Cambridge University Press.
Johnston, Anna (2012). Linguistics, Religion, and Law in Colonial New South Wales: Lancelot Threlkeld and Settler-Colonial Humanitarian Debates. Past Law, Present Histories: From Settler Colonies to International Justice. (pp. 23-38) edited by Diane Kirkby. Canberra, Australia: Australian University Press. doi: 10.22459/plph.09.2012.02
Johnston, Anna and Lawson, Alan (2010). Settler postcolonialism and Australian literary culture. Modern Australian criticism and theory. (pp. 28-40) edited by David Carter and Wang Guanglin. Qingdao, China: Ocean University of China Press.
Johnston, Anna and Rolls, Mitchell (2008). Reading Friendly Mission in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction. Reading Robinson: Companion Essays to Friendly Mission. (pp. 13-25) edited by Anna Johnston and Mitchell Rolls. Hobart, TAS, Australia: Quintus Publishing.
Johnston, Anna (2007). The bible trade: commerce and Christianity in the Pacific. In Leigh Dale and Helen M. Gilbert (Ed.), Economies of representation, 1790-2000: colonialism and commerce (pp. 31-39) Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing.
Crane, Ralph and Johnston, Anna (2007). Flora Annie Steel in the Punjab. Writing, Travel, and Empire: In the Margins of Anthropology. (pp. 71-95) edited by Peter Hulme and Russell McDougall. London, United Kingdom: I.B. Tauris.
Johnston, Anna (2007). Planting the Seeds of Christianity: Ecological Reform in Nineteenth-Century Polynesian London Missionary Society Stations. Five Emus to the King of Siam: Environment and Empire. (pp. 149-163) edited by Helen Tiffin. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi.
Johnston, Anna (2006). Writing the Southern Cross: Religious Travel Writing in Nineteenth-Century Australasia. Travel in the 1800s: Filling the Blank Spaces. (pp. 201-218) edited by Tim Youngs. London, United Kingdom: Anthem Press. doi: 10.7135/UPO9781843317692.012
Johnston, Anna (2006). A Blister on the Imperial Antipodes: Lancelot Edward Threlkeld in Polynesia and Australia. Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century. (pp. 58-87) edited by David Lambert and Alan Lester. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Gilbert, Helen M. and Johnston, Anna (2002). Introduction. In Helen Gilbert and Anna Johnston (Ed.), In transit: travel, text, empire 1 ed. (pp. 1-20) New York, NY USA: Peter Lang.
Johnston, Anna (2002). Tahiti, “the desire of our eyes”’: Missionary Travel Narratives and Imperial Surveillance. In Transit: Travel, Text, Empire. (pp. 65-83) edited by Helen Gilbert and Anna Johnston. New York, NY, United States: Peter Lang.
Johnston, Anna (2001). Antipodean heathens: The London Missionary Society in Polynesia and Australia, 1800-1850. Colonial frontiers: Indigenous-European encounters in settler societies. (pp. 68-81) edited by Lynette Russell. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press.
Johnston, Anna and Lawson, Alan (2000). Settler colonies. A companion to postcolonial studies. (pp. 360-376) edited by Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray. Malden, Mass USA: Blackwell. doi: 10.1111/b.9780631206637.2004.00021.x
Journal Articles
Johnston, Anna and Piccini, Jon (2024). Lucky Country
or
Shrinking Nation
? Australian Studies Past, Present and Future. Journal of Australian Studies, 1-3. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2024.2417480
Johnston, Anna (2024). Congratulations to the 2023 Winners of the John Barrett Award. Journal of Australian Studies, 48 (3), 1-3. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2024.2380643
Johnston, Anna (2023). Congratulations to the 2022 Winners of the John Barrett Award. Journal of Australian Studies, 47 (3), 430-431. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2023.2237284
Johnston, Anna and Magagnoli, Paolo (2022). Histories of the illustrated magazine in Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 47 (1), 1-7. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2023.2156085
Johnston, Anna (2019). Exhibiting the enlightenment: Joseph Banks’s Florilegium and colonial knowledge production. Journal of Australian Studies, 43 (1), 118-132. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2019.1572024
Johnston, Anna (2018). Review of The World, the Flesh and the Devil: The Life and Opinions of Samuel Marsden in England and the Antipodes, 1765–1838. By Andrew Sharp. Auckland, Auckland University Press, 2016. viii + 926 pp., illus., maps, notes, index. ISBN 9781869408121 (hbk). Journal of Pacific History, 53 (2), 222-224. doi: 10.1080/00223344.2018.1437679
Johnston, Anna (2017). The Language of Colonial Violence: Lancelot Threlkeld, Humanitarian Narratives and the New South Wales Law Courts. law&history, 4 (2), 72-102.
Johnston, Anna (2017). Becoming “Pacific-minded”: Australian middlebrow writers in the 1940s and the mobility of texts. Transfers, 7 (1), 88-107. doi: 10.3167/TRANS.2017.070107
Johnston, Anna (2016). Little England: nineteenth-century Tasmanian travel writing and settler colonialism. Studies in Travel Writing, 20 (1), 17-33. doi: 10.1080/13645145.2015.1136035
Johnston, Anna (2016). Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Maori, and the Question of the Body. Journal of British Studies, 55 (2), 422-423. doi: 10.1017/jbr.2016.18
Clarke, Robert and Johnston, Anna (2016). Travelling the sequestered Isle: Tasmania as penitentiary, laboratory and sanctuary. Studies in Travel Writing, 20 (1), 1-16. doi: 10.1080/13645145.2015.1136091
Johnston, Anna (2016). ʻThe awful depravity of human nature’: violence and humanitarian narratives in New South Wales and Tahiti, 1796–99. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 17 (1). doi: 10.1353/cch.2016.0016
Edmonds, Penelope and Johnston, Anna (2016). Empire, humanitarianism and violence in the colonies. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 17 (1). doi: 10.1353/cch.2016.0013
Johnston, Anna (2016). Reading Walkabout in Osaka: Travel, Mobility, and Place-making. PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature, 12, 137-142.
Clark, Robert, Dutton, Jacqueline and Johnston, Anna (2014). Shadow zones: dark travel and postcolonial cultures. Postcolonial Studies, 17 (3), 221-235. doi: 10.1080/13688790.2014.993426
Crane, Ralph and Johnston, Anna (2011). Introduction: Administering colonial spaces in Australasia and India. Empire Calling: Administering Colonial Australasia and India, vii-xiv. doi: 10.1017/CBO9789382264798.001
Johnston, Anna (2009). George Augustus Robinson, the ‘Great Conciliator’: colonial celebrity and its postcolonial aftermath. Postcolonial Studies , 12 (2), 153-172. doi: 10.1080/13688790902887155
Johnston, Anna (2007). The strange career of William Ellis. Victorian Studies, 49 (3), 491-501. doi: 10.2979/VIC.2007.49.3.491
Johnston, A (2005). British missionary publishing, missionary celebrity, and empire. Nineteenth Century Prose, 32 (2), 20-+.
Johnston, Anna (2004). The ‘little empire of Wybalenna’: becoming colonial in Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 28 (81), 17-31. doi: 10.1080/14443050409387935
Johnston, Anna (2003). Missionary Men: Forming Identities in Imperial Evangelical Britain. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, 9, 89-105.
Johnston, A (2002). Writing the nation: Self and country in post-colonial imagination. Canadian Literature (173), 142-143.
Johnston, Anna (2001). The book eaters: textuality, modernity, and the London Missionary Society. Semeia, 88, 13-40.
Johnston, Anna (2000). On the importance of bonnets: the London Missionary Society and the politics of dress in nineteenth-century Polynesia. New Literatures Review, 36, 114-127.
Johnston, Anna (1999). Unbecoming Post-Colonial Narratives: Eric Michaels’ 'Unbecoming: An AIDS Diary'. Southern Review, 32 (1), 60-71.
Johnston, Anna (1997). 'God being, not in the bush’: The Nundah Mission (Qld) and Colonialism. Queensland Review, 4 (1), 71-80. doi: 10.1017/S1321816600001331
Johnston, Anna (1996). Australian Autobiography and the Politics of Making Post-Colonial Space. Westerly, 41 (2), 73-80.
Conference Paper
Farley, Simon and Johnston, Anna (2017). Collections and print culture in the wake of Cook's Endeavour voyage. The Australian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres Annual Conference: GLAMorous Humanities: Working with Collecting and Cultural Institutions., Canberra, Australia, 8-10 November 2017.
Theses
Johnston, Anna (1999). Adam's ribs : gender, colonialism, and the missionaries, 1800-1860. PhD Thesis, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/185182
Johnston, Anna (1996). The "Memoirs of many in one" : post-colonial autobiography in settler cultures. M.A. Thesis, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/uql.2020.762