Clare Wright

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Professor Clare Wright is an award-winning historian, author, broadcaster and public commentator who has worked in politics, academia and the media. Clare holds a PhD in Australian Studies from the University of Melbourne and an MA in Public History from Monash University and is currently Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University.
Her latest book, Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions (2024), is described as ‘an impossibly important book’ that traces the story of a founding document of Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. This is the final chapter in Clare’s best-selling Democracy Trilogy, and follows the land rights movement led by Australia’s first people.

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Her best-selling first book, Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australia’s Female Publicans (Text), was met with both critical and popular acclaim. Her best-selling second book and first instalment of her Democracy Trilogy, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (Text), was based on a decade of archival research into women’s role in the Eureka Stockade. It won the 2014 Stella Prize and the NIB Literary Award (and People’s Choice Award) and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the NSW Premier’s History Awards, the WA Premier’s Literary Awards, the Victorian Community History Awards, and longlisted for a Walkley Award. 

We Are the Rebels, a Young Adult version of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, was published by Text in 2015 and was shortlisted for the Australian Children’s Book Council Awards. The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka is currently being developed into a ten-part television drama series with Ruby Entertainment and Hollywood screenwriter/producer, Anne Kenney.

Clare’s next book was the best-selling You Daughters of Freedom (Text), published in October 2018. You Daughters of Freedom was shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Australian History Association’s Magarey Medal for Biography.

In 2022, Clare was on the National Cultural Policy Expert Advisory Panel and was commissioned to co-write (with Christos Tsiolkis) the Vision Statement for the policy document, Revive. She is Chair of the National Museum of Australia Council. 

Clare has worked as a political speechwriter, university lecturer, historical consultant and as a broadcaster in both radio and television. 

She is a popular public speaker and has presented numerous keynote addresses and dinner talks at academic conferences, AGMs, Writers Festivals, bookstores and community and corporate events. Clare is also a past Director on the Board of the The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas.

Clare’s thought-provoking essays, reviews and opinion writing have appeared in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, The Conversation, Overland, Crikey and Meanjin as well as leading national and international scholarly journals. 

Clare researched, co-wrote and presented the acclaimed television documentary Utopia Girls: How Women Won the Vote, which first screened on ABC1 in June 2012. Clare created and co-wrote the four-part documentary series The War That Changed Us for Electric Pictures and ABC1. The series premiered on 23 August 2014 as part of the ABC’s centenary of WW1 programming. The War That Changed Us won an ATOM Award for Best Documentary and was nominated for a Logie for Most Outstanding Factual Program. 


Clare was also the Associate Producer and Historical Advisor for the documentary feature film One Mind, One Heart. It premiered in 2024 and won the NSW History Awards Digital History Prize the following year. Clare has also contributed as a historical advisor to television programs such as Australian Story and for the documentary series The Idea of Australia (2025). Clare is the writer and host of the ABC Radio National history series and podcast, Shooting the Past and has been a frequent co-host on ABC Radio Melbourne’s The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine.


As a freelance historical consultant, Clare’s clients include Sovereign Hill Museums Association, the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka and many television production companies. She runs her consultancy practice as Done Gone Productions. 


For Clare’s scholarly outputs, see here. 


In 2020, Clare was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list for ‘services to literature and to historical research’. In 2026, she was also inducted to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women as a ‘Change Agent’, acknowledging her lasting contribution to the state of Victoria.


Clare is currently Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University. She has previously held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship for the project Red Dirt Dreaming: A New History of Australian Mining. In August 2024, she was appointed as the Chair of the Council of the National Museum of Australia for a three year term.

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