Person

Bashford, Alison (1963 - )

FBA FAHA

Born
1963
Occupation
Science historian

Summary

Alison Bashford is a historian who specialises in global history and history of science. She has made significant contributions in the areas of colonial science and medicine, particularly in the Australian and British imperial contexts. Bashford was Professor of Modern History at the University of Sydney between 2009 and 2012, serving a term as Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. Elected Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge in 2013, she returned to Australia in 2017 to become Research Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. She has received a number of awards for her research, including the Royal Society of New South Wales's History and Philosophy of Science Medal.

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"Professor Bashford is one of Australia's most eminent historians, recognised internationally for her ground-breaking and transformative historical studies of the biomedical and environmental sciences. Her scholarly distinction is recognised by fellowships of both Australian and British academies. Professor Bashford has greatly enlarged and raised our understanding of past conceptions of race, population and place in Australia and the world. She has brought the history of the human and environmental sciences into the scope of world history. She has written five acclaimed books and numerous other published works in which she reveals connections of science and medicine with national projects and global ambitions. Further, her extensive and various studies have reoriented the history of science toward the southern hemisphere and the Pacific, showing us how natural knowledge has been assembled in Australia and the region." [from https://www.royalsoc.org.au/history-and-philosophy-of-science-medal/ 2026-01-29]

Chronology

1996
Education - PhD, University of Sydney
1996 - 2009
Career position - Lecturer in History, University of Sydney
2009 - 2010
Career position - Chair of Australian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
2009 - 2012
Career position - Professor of Modern History, University of Sydney
2010 -
Award - Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities
2011
Award - Cantemir Prize (jointly with Phillippa Levine), Berendel Foundation, United Kingdom
2011 - 2014
Award - ARC Future fellowship
2013 - 2017
Career position - Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge
2017 -
Award - Fellow, British Academy
2017 -
Career position - Research Professor of History, University of New South Wales
2018 -
Award - Fellow, Royal Society of New South Wales
2018
Award - History and Philosophy of Science Prize, Royal Society of New South Wales
2020 - 2026
Award - ARC Laureate Fellowship
2021
Award - Dan David Prize, Dan David Foundation, Israel
2021 - 2025
Career position - Chief Investigator, ARC Discovery Project: Antipodean geology

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Books

  • Bashford, Alison, Purity and pollution: gender, embodiment and Victorian medicine (London: Macmillan, 1998). Details
  • Bashford, Alison, Imperial Hygiene: a Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and Public Health (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 263 pp. Details
  • Bashford, Alison, The Huxleys: an intimate history of evolution (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2022), 576 pp. Details
  • Strange, Carolyn and Bashford, Alison, Griffith Taylor: Visionary, Environmentalist, Explorer (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2008), 200 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Bashford, A., 'The great white plague turns alien: tuberculosis and immigration in Australia 1901- 2001' in Tuberculosis then and now: perspectives on the history of an infectious disease, Worboys, M. and Condrau, F., eds (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2010), pp. 100-22. Details
  • Bashford, Alison and Hobbins, Peter, 'Science and Medicine' in The Cambridge History of Australia, vol. 2, the Commonwealth of Australia, Bashford, Alison and Macintyre, Stuart, eds (Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 263-83. Details

Edited Books

  • Armitage, David and Bashford, Alison eds, Pacific histories: ocean, land, people . (Basingstoke, U.K: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 371 pp. Details
  • Bashford, Alison ed., Respectability, Morality, Cleanliness: the Feminisation of Hospitals in Colonial Australia (London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, 1994), 85-96 pp. Details
  • Bashford, Alison and Hooker, Claire eds, Contagion: epidemics, history and culture from smallpox to anthrax (Annandale, N.S.W.: Pluto Press: Hazard Press, 2002), 244 pp. Details
  • Bashford, Alison and Levine, Phillippa eds, The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 586 pp. Details

Journal Articles

  • Bashford, A., 'Frances Gillam Holden and the Children's Hospital dispute, 1887: woman's sphere, feminism and nursing', Women’s history review, 2 (1993), 319-30. Details
  • Bashford, A. and Hobbins, P., ' Rethinking quarantine: pacific history at Australia's edge', Australian historical studies, 46 (3) (2015), 391-409. Details
  • Bashford, A.; and Hobbins, P., 'Rewriting quarantine: Pacific history at Australia's edge', Australian Historical Studies, 46 (3) (2015), 392-409. Details
  • Bashford, Alison, 'Female Bodies at Work: Gender and the Re-forming of Colonial Hospitals', Australian Cultural History (1994), 65-81. Details
  • Bashford, Alison, 'Epidemic and governmentality: smallpox in Sydney, 1881', Critical public Health, 9 (4) (1999), 301-16. Details
  • Bashford, Alison, 'Tuberculosis & Economy: Public Health & Labour in the Early Welfare State', Health and History, 4 (2) (2002), 19-40. Details
  • Bashford, Alison and Howard, Sarah, 'Immigration and Health: Law and Regulation in Australia, 1901-1958', Health and History, 6 (1) (2004), 97-112. Details
  • Bashford, Alison and Power, Bernadette, 'Immigration and Health: Law and Regulation in Australia, 1958-2004', Health and History, 7 (1) (2005), 86-101. Details
  • Chi Chi Huang and Bashford, Alison, 'Smallpox geographies: vaccination, borders and Indigenous peoples in Australia's coastal north', Medical history, 68 (1) (2024), 22-41. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2023.39. Details
  • Hobbins, P.; Clarke, A.; Frederick, U.; and Bashford, A., 'Geographies of commemoration: Angel Island, San Francisco and North Head, Sydney', Journal of Historical Geography, 52 (2016), 16-25. Details
  • Hooker, Claire: and Bashford, Alison, 'Diphtheria and Australian public health: bacteriology and its complex applications, c.1890 -1930', Medical history, 46 (1) (2002), 41-64, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300068733. Details

Resources

See also

  • Robson, Alexandra K.; Production Manager and Editor eds, Who's who in Australia 2019 (Southbank, Vic.: AAP Directories, 2018), 1788 pp. Details

Helen Cohn

Created: 29 January 2026

EOAS ID: biogs/P007963b.htm

This Edition: 2026 February - 1926 Centenaries
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