Anthony McLeod is a MPhil candidate in the School of History. His research explores the development, implementation, impacts and legacies of a particular form of land title (Special Survey) that was issued in the mid-nineteenth century in several Australian jurisdictions (South Australia, Victoria and Northern Territory). The objective of his research is to catalogue the use of these provisions in Australia (and potentially other locations in the British Empire), establish the social, political and economic drivers for these regulations and ascertain their impacts on the Australian landscape, First Nations and land laws. His study intends to bring the history of Special Survey provisions to light in a considered and critical way and place these regulations into the wider context of land release and Indigenous dispossession throughout Australia.

From 2003 to 2024, he held senior roles in the Federal Government, focusing on water management in the Murray-Darling Basin. Before this, he also worked on water management with the New South Wales Government and as part of his PhD in environmental engineering at the University of Melbourne (1993).