Henry Reynolds | |
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Born |
Hobart, Tasmania |
1 March 1938
Awards | Sir Ernest Scott Prize (1982) Harold White Fellowship (1986) Human Rights Commission Literature Award (1988) Banjo Award (1996) Human Rights Commission Arts Non-Fiction Award (1999) Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (1999) Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1999) Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Literary Work Advancing Public Debate (2000) Queensland Premier's History Book Award (2008) Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction (2009) Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction (2014) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater |
University of Tasmania (BA [Hons], MA) James Cook University (PhD) |
Academic work | |
Institutions |
University of Tasmania (2000–) James Cook University (1965–98) |
Main interests | Australian colonial history Aboriginal–white relations in Australia |
Notable works | The Other Side of the Frontier (1981) |
Henry Reynolds FAHA, FASSA (born 1 March 1938) is an eminent Australian historian whose primary work has focused on the frontier conflict between European settlers in Australia and indigenous Australians.
Reynolds received a state school education in Hobart, Tasmania, from 1944 to 1954. Following this, he attended the University of Tasmania, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History in 1960, later gaining a Master of Arts in 1964. He gained his PhD in History from James Cook University in 1970. He received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from his alma mater, the University of Tasmania, in 1998.
He then taught in secondary schools in Australia and England, later establishing the Australian History programme at Townsville University College, where he accepted a lectureship in 1965, later serving as an Associate Professor of History and Politics from 1982 until his retirement in 1998. He then took up an Australian Research Council post as a professorial fellow at the University of Tasmania in Launceston, and subsequently a post at the University's Riawunna Centre for Aboriginal Education. He currently serves as Honorary Research Professor in the University's School of Humanities.
Henry Reynolds is married to Margaret Reynolds, an ALP Senator for Queensland in Federal Parliament (1983 until 1999).
In more than ten books and numerous academic articles Reynolds has demonstrated the results of his meticulous research and explained the high level of violence and conflict involved in the colonisation of Australia, and the Aboriginal resistance to numerous massacres of indigenous people. Reynolds, and other historians, estimate that up to 3,000 Europeans and at least 20,000 indigenous Australians were killed directly in the frontier violence, and many more Aborigines died indirectly through the introduction of European diseases and starvation caused by being forced from their productive tribal lands.