Griffith University

Associate  Professor Fiona Paisley researches the impact of transnational stories concerning colonialism and modernity narrated by internationalists in the first half of the twentieth century. Her research has provided insight into the history of race and gender relations in Australia.Her first book Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women’s Rights, 1919-1939 (Melbourne University Press, 2000)  was distinguished as ‘a timely perspective on this shameful episode in Australia’s race relations history’ (Maria Nugent). Her current research aims to reveal an extraordinary little known story of the first Aboriginal internationalist to be directly active in Europe in the twentieth century, Anthony Martin Fernando. His life of protest overseas included a series of remarkable protests, from picketing Australia House, to leafleting pilgrims to Rome in 1925, and an appeal to the Swiss people in the pages of a Berne newspaper. (Read More)