Gillian Cowlishaw

Cowlishaw was born in the rural area of Otakiri, near Edgecumbe in the Bay of Plenty Region, New Zealand in 1934 and grew up on her parents' dairy farm with three siblings. She attended Otakiri School, followed by high school in Whakatane. When she was 17, she moved to Auckland to study at Auckland Teachers' Training College. After graduating, she moved to Australia and taught school there.[1]

In 1970 she enrolled at the University of Sydney to study anthropology. She focussed on Aboriginal women's lives and spent time living in southern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory to complete field work.[2] She completed her PhD in anthropology in 1979. She went on to teach at Charles Sturt University, Australian National University, and the University of Sydney (1992 to 1997). She was a research professor at University of Technology Sydney (from 1998 to 2005) before returning to the University of Sydney.[1][3]

Her 2004 book Blackfellas, Whitefellas and the Hidden Injuries of Race won the New South Wales Premier's Award:, the Gleebook Prize for Critical Writing in 2005.[4]

In 2009 the Australian Research Council awarded Cowlishaw an Australian Professorial Fellowship.[1] She used the fellowship to research urban Aborigines in Sydney's western suburbs.[3]

Cowlishaw has contributed to a number of government and community agencies. She was commissioned to write a report for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1990, for the Katherine Regional Aboriginal Legal Service in 2000, and for the Northern Land Council in 2004. From 1991 to 2001 she was an editor for the journal Oceania, and from 2006 to 2008 she was president of the Australian Anthropological Society. From 2009 she has convened the Sydney Writers' Anthropology Groups. In 2013, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.[1]