Position: PhD Student
School and/or Centres: School of History
Email: ruby.ekkel@anu.edu.au
Qualification: Master of Global, Transnational and Spatial History (Distinction), University of St Andrews; Bachelor of Arts (Honours), University of Melbourne
Ruby Ekkel is a PhD candidate at Australian National University. Her research focuses on changing interactions with Australian native animals, especially as mediated by women. After completing a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) as a Chancellor's Scholar at the University of Melbourne, Ruby achieved a Masters degree at the University of St Andrews. As part of her PhD she completed a year-long residency at the University of Oxford, Christ Church College, where she taught undergraduate tutorials in History of Science. Ruby has published and presented on topics spanning animal history, environmental history, and women's history in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Ruby also contributes to public forums including The Conversation, ABC Radio, and the Australian Book Review. She has served as an HDR Representative for the Australian Historical Association Executive, and was a co-editor of the ANU Historical Journal II no. 4. She will be the 2026 Religious History Research Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales.
Women's and gender history; environmental history especially in colonial contexts; animal history; religious history; food history; transnational and spatial history.
Peer-reviewed journal articles:
'Virgin peaks and blazed trails: Marie Byles' strides for women in colonised Australia' [book chapter], Privilege of Trailblazing, eds. Karen Fox, Michelle Staff and Kim Rubenstein, forthcoming.
'Real men don't kill koalas: gender and conservationism in the Queensland koala open season of 1927', Australian Historical Studies vol. 56, issue 2 (July 2025): https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2024.2370786.
' 'Making friends with lyre-birds': Alice Manfield and settler belonging in Mount Buffalo National Park', Settler Colonial Studies vol. 15, no. 2 (April 2025): https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2025.2479287.
'The Meaning of a Bushwalk with the Melbourne Women's Walking Club, 1922-1945', Australian Historical Studies (14 October 2024): https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2024.2406839.
'Mimicking lyrebirds in multispecies history', Environment and History 30, no. 2 (7 April 2024): 170-6, https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903583.
'Vegetarians, vivisection and violationism: gender and the non-human animal in Anna Kingsford's life and writing', Lilith Feminist History Journal, no. 28 (2022): 73-96.
'Woman's sphere remodelled: a spatial history of the Victorian Woman's Christian Temperance Union', Victorian Historical Journal 93, no.1 (June 2020): 90-111.
Edited journals:
ANU Historical Journal II (editor), no. 4 (November 2023), http://doi.org/10.22459/ANUHJII.2023.
Media and public-facing communication:
'In Her Nature', Vida (Australian Women's History Network Blog), introductory blog post for edited blog series on women in environmental history, 19 June 2025, https://www.auswhn.com.au/blog/in-her-nature/.
''The bush calls us': the defiant women who demanded a place on the walking track', The Conversation, interactive multimedia article, 25 October 2024, https://bushwalking-women-blazing-a-trail.netlify.app/.
'The Oulu Diaries: a first-timer's reflections on the World Congress of Environmental History', Network in Canadian History and Environment Blog, 2 October 2024, https://niche-canada.org/2024/10/02/the-oulu-diaries-a-first-timers-reflections-on-the-world-congress-of-environmental-history/.
'We once killed 600 000 koalas in a year: now they're Australia's 'teddy bears'. What changed?' The Conversation, 31 January 2024, https://theconversation.com/we-once-killed-600-000-koalas-in-a-year-now-theyre-australias-teddy-bears-what-changed-219609; 99 000+ reads and 14 republications including translation into Cantonese.
Extended feature on ABC Radio Saturday Breakfast Program 3, 2 February 2024, https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-saturdaybreakfast/queenslands-open-season-on-koalas-in-1927-and-how-it-changed-pub/103423098.
'Should we stop eating meat? The case from Victorian England', Vida (Blog for the Australian Women's History Network), 1 November 2023, https://www.auswhn.com.au/blog/should-we-stop-eating-meat/.
Religious History Research Fellowship
State Library of New South Wales | 2026
Awarded research fellowship ($20,000) for archival research developing project 'All creatures great and small: faith and nature education in New South Wales', spanning women's history, animal history, religious studies and environmental history.
Winner of the Council of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Future Leaders Writing Prize, 2025
Winner of the Max Kelly Award, History Council of New South Wales, 2025
Winner of the Australian Society for Sports History Award for best published article by a postgraduate researcher, 2023-2025
Winner of the Gender Institute Prize for Excellence in Gender and Sexuality Research (Journal article published by an ANU higher degree researcher), 2025
Received citation for the Jill Roe Prize for best article in history of a postgraduate student, 2025
Nominated for a Quill Award for Excellence in Victorian Journalism, 2025
Winner of the Kay Schaffer Prize for the best unpublished essay on storytelling in Australian Studies, 2024
Winner of the Ken Inglis Postgraduate Prize for the best article in history by a postgraduate student, 2023
Runner-Up for the Women's History Network MA Prize for Best Dissertation, 2022
Winner of the Victorian Community History Award (Best Historical Article), 2020
Winner of the Ken and Amirah Inglis AHA Conference Grant Award, Australian Historical Association, 2025
Winner of the Research School of Social Sciences Director's Award for Higher Degree Research (awarded to the top-ranked humanities and social sciences PhD applicant), 2022-2024
Nominated for a College of Arts and Sciences Award for Excellence in Education, 2023
Selected for the Hansen Scholarship at the University of Melbourne, 2022
Dean's List Scholar, University of St Andrews, 2021
One of four finalists for the Victorian Rhodes Scholarship, 2020
Awarded the University of St Andrews School of History MLitt Scholarship, 2020-2021
Ruby has experience tutoring the following subjects:
- HISTSCOM3032 Making Modern Science (ANU
- HIST2226 Nazi Germany (ANU)
- HIST2141 Cold War (ANU)
- HIST3242 Making Modern Science (ANU)
- History of Science (University of Oxford)
- HIST1007 Medieval War, Plague and Heresy (Newman College)
- INTS10001 International Politics (Newman College)
- HIST10012 World Since World War Two (Newman College)
Ruby has also delivered individual lectures on conservationism and zoo history, at Charles Darwin University and the University of Cambridge.