Name Lyndall Ryan | ||
 | ||
Born 14 April 1943 (age 80)
Paddington, New South Wales ( 1943-04-14 ) Institutions University of Newcastle (1998–)
Flinders University (1984–97)
Griffith University (1977–83) Thesis Aborigines in Tasmania, 1800–1974 and their problems with the Europeans (1975) Main interests Indigenous Australian history
Australian colonial relations Major works The Aboriginal Tasmanians (1981) Notable awards John Barrett Award for Australian Studies (2013) Alma mater University of Sydney, Macquarie University Books Tasmanian Aborigines: A History, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Who was that Woman, A Bibliography of Australi | ||
Lyndall Ryan (born 14 April 1943) is an Australian academic and historian. She has held positions in Australian Studies and Women's Studies at Griffith University and Flinders University and was Foundation Professor of Australian Studies and Head of School of Humanities at the University of Newcastle, 1998–2005. She is currently Research Professor in the Centre for the History of Violence in the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Newcastle. She completed a PhD at Macquarie University in 1975, her thesis was titled "Aborigines in Tasmania, 1800–1974 and their problems with the Europeans".
Her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians, first published in 1981, presented a critical interpretation of the early history of relations between Tasmanian Aborigines and white settlers in Tasmania. A second edition was published by Allen & Unwin in 1996, in which she brought the story of the Tasmanian Aborigines in the 20th century up to date. Her work was later attacked by Keith Windschuttle, thus drawing her into the "history wars". Windschuttle pointed to alleged discrepancies between Ryan's claims, her cited sources for the claims, and what the cited sources for the claims and the historical record actually reported. Ryan contested Windschuttle's claims in an essay entitled 'Who is the fabricator?' in Robert Manne's Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle Fabrication of Aboriginal History published in 2003 and further addressed them in her book, Tasmanian Aborigines: A History Since 1803, published in 2012.