Professor Ann McGrath, Director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History in the History Department at the ANU, has congratulated Kathleen Jackson, a volunteer in the Centre, on her recent success in winning a PhD scholarship to Harvard. A descendant of the Wiradjuri people of New South Wales, Kathleen was born in Dubbo, and is currently completing a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in history at the University of Newcastle.

She came to the ANU as a Summer Scholar in December 2012 where she was involved in the ‘ANU Emeriti Oral History Video Project’. Her supervisor Dr Paul Arthur put her in touch with Dr Mary Anne Jebb of the ‘Deepening Histories of Place’ (DHoP) ARC Linkage Project, which lead to a video interview with Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney. This interview can be viewed on : http://historynet.anu.edu.au/summer-scholars-2012/john-mulvaney.

She went on the assist with production of a digital history ‘Reflections on Arnhem Land history with Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney,’ which will be available on the DHoP Project’s website in April.
At Harvard, Kathleen will research the important topic of a transnational history of racial passing, or passing for white, focussing upon the history of African American people in the United States and Aboriginal people in Australia.

‘Kathleen is a very high achieving scholar and a role model’, Professor McGrath noted. ‘We are very pleased at her success in securing this prestigious scholarship’.