In this blog, Vera Mackie and the Australian Women’s History Network remember Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan, AO, FAHA (1943–2024).
We were saddened to hear one year ago of the passing of Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan, AO, FAHA (1943–2024). Ryan was an important figure in Australian History, Indigenous History, and Women’s and Gender History.
Over her lifetime she was an activist, a bureaucrat and an academic. Ryan is well known for her important interventions in debates on Indigenous and Australian History and for her record in mentoring younger scholars. Over her academic career, she worked at the Australian National University, Griffith University, Flinders University and the University of Newcastle.
My memories of Lyndall date back to the 1980s, when we both worked in Adelaide (Lyndall at Flinders University, while I was at the University of Adelaide). Every Friday afternoon, feminist scholars from all the universities in Adelaide would gather for the University of Adelaide Centre for Women’s Studies Seminars.
After each seminar, we would congregate in the Staff Club for drinks and then move on to a restaurant for dinner. Over dinner, we would all engage in discussion about matters personal, political and scholarly. I like to think of these occasions as ‘feminist tables’. Even after many of us moved on, we would reconvene these ‘feminist tables’ at conference dinners or at the annual meetings of other organisations.
As an activist, Ryan was a founding member of the Sydney Women’s Liberation Group in 1970. She also became involved in the establishment of the Leichhardt Women’s Community Health Centre. Ryan worked as a policy analyst for the Australian Public Service from 1974.
Ryan’s profile can be seen at the Australian Women’s Register. Upon her passing, Professor Ann Curthoys provided a warm and thoughtful tribute in the Guardian, James Bennett in the Sydney Morning Herald, and Professor Angela Woollacott provided a tribute for the Australian Women’s History Network, and Professor Victoria Haskins provided a tribute for the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Her friends and colleagues have provided their reminiscences and tributes below. Several mention her involvement in the so-called ‘History Wars’ – which revolved around the extent of frontier violence – and remember her brave responses to unwarranted criticism. Ryan wrote the landmark book Tasmanian Aborigines: A History since 1803 (2012) and was a main driver of the establishment of the prize-winning on-line Colonial Frontier Massacre Map at the University of Newcastle in 2017.
On the anniversary of her passing, we share reflections about Ryan’s remarkable life from her colleagues and contemporaries.
Professor Lynette Russell (Monash University)
Many of us who studied history in the late 1980s and 1990s had been educated in a school system that continued to describe the ‘extinction’ of the Tasmanians. Lyndall’s collaborative work with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, the historical record and oral histories offered a corrective that changed how history was taught and researched. She created a new paradigm. Her unwavering commitment to revealing and recounting the often concealed and marginalised aspects of Australia’s history left an indelible mark on our nation’s history.
Beyond her meticulous and profound research, she was exceedingly generous and never failed to assist and offer comments. She showed a new way of scholarship, one that was feminist, nurturing, and considerate. At conferences where we often interacted, she was usually surrounded by awestruck young historians, whom she was invariably mentoring.
At a personal level, Lyndall and I were occasionally confused by early career scholars, something about sharing the LR initials. Most recently, at a conference, someone complimented me on my work only for me to realise they were, in fact, meaning Lyndall. Whenever this happened, we’d share an email and a giggle. I suspect people rarely made the mistake the other way around, but Lyndall never said so.
She was the personification of grace, style and elegance. I will never forget her pink boots, in fact I think that whenever I remember her, I will imagine her in those pink boots. I will miss her intellect, her prodigious output, but even more than that I will miss her charm and kindness, these are such rare qualities in academia’.
Professor Joy Damousi (The University of Melbourne)
I first met Lyndall in the early 1990s when we were both working in women’s studies. As a junior academic at the time, I treasured and immediately responded to Lyndall’s warmth, generosity, encouragement, insights and support. Above all, I adored her wicked sense of humour and her ready, fulsome laughter. I valued how inclusive, and thoughtful Lyndall was whenever I saw her, usually at conferences or seminars. At this time, looking back, Lyndall was a skilled mentor before the word, or practice became fashionable in academic circles.
Over the ensuing 30 years or so, her abiding generosity never wavered. I was delighted when our paths crossed on various projects of mutual interest which included the history of communism and the history of violence. Sharing a research project with Lyndall was such a gift for her intellectual engagement and outstanding insights, and the passion and energy she brought to her work, which was infectious and exhilarating. Lyndall enriched the history profession and all those around her through her wisdom and wit, her vast knowledge and experience, and her deep kindness. It has been a great privilege to have known her.
Professor Shurlee Swain (Australian Catholic University)
My strongest memory of Lyndall comes from the Australian Historical Association conference held in Newcastle in the midst of the ‘History Wars’ set off by the publication of the Windschuttle book on Tasmania, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002). Although several prominent historians were criticised in the book a cowardly media focused on the woman and Ryan found herself under siege.
Her appeal for support at the conference was impassioned and I am sure that I was not the only person in the audience who wondered whether she would have the strength to carry on. But how wrong we were. The massacre map project was her response and will stand as her legacy long after Windschuttle and his followers have been forgotten.
Professor Angela Woollacott (Australian National University)
With the passing of Lyndall Ryan, the history discipline in Australia has lost one of its greats. Those of us in women’s history know how pioneering her work was. Not only a femocrat, she was the inaugural academic appointment in Women’s Studies at Flinders University.
After being scurrilously attacked during the History Wars, she responded with the landmark book Tasmanian Aborigines: A history since 1803. Then she would drive the building of the Colonial Frontier Massacre Map that has changed public understanding of frontier warfare.
I was fortunate to get to know Lyndall after Rae Frances, Penny Russell and I started the Sydney Feminist History Group in 2005. Lyndall was a frequent participant, contributing insightfully to discussions, and with generous camaraderie at the dinners after each seminar.
Another memory I cherish is the key role she took in the ‘How the Personal became Political’ conference on the 1970s feminist and sexuality revolutions that Michelle Arrow and I co-convened at ANU in March 2017. Lyndall skilfully chaired the superb keynote lecture delivered by femocrat Elizabeth Reid. Moreover, she personally ensured that some of the 1970s feminists were there to make it a richly cross-generational event. Ryan combined intellect and professionalism with warmth and generosity in an inimitable way.
Emeritus Professor Susan Sheridan (Flinders University)
From 1986 to 1998, Ryan held the position of Reader and Foundation head of the new Women’s Studies Unit at Flinders University. Lyndall was a great enabler of others’ work. Women’s Studies was like a magnet for women wanting to pursue postgraduate research, who could find no welcoming home elsewhere in the university. Lyndall also co-supervised a number of History students working in Aboriginal Studies. Our commitment to interdisciplinarity was constantly challenged, always expanding.
Lyndall was a member of the pioneering Adelaide-based National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) expert committee about abortion, which set out to create guidelines for the provision of abortion services. The committee’s report was, however, withdrawn shortly after the Howard government came to power, a bitter defeat for feminist abortion advocacy.
As the most senior appointment in Women’s Studies in Australia at the time, Ryan did a lot to strengthen the area as an academic discipline, most importantly by initiating the formation of the national Women’s and Gender Studies Association, which met for the first time in July 1989 in Adelaide, with around 200 registrants.
At Flinders University, Ryan served on the Equal Opportunity Committee for seven years, developing policies and procedures on affirmative action, sexual harassment and research mentoring for women. It was truly a multi-skilled job. In addition to pursuing the abortion research, Ryan updated her pathbreaking 1981 book, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, in 1996, and went on publishing in this field – we agreed that we should enter the fray of national competitive research funding. Out of this was born the Australian Women’s Weekly project, analysing the iconic women’s magazine over the 25-year period between the end of the war and the advent of women’s liberation, resulting in the publication of Who Was That Woman? The Australian Women’s Weekly in the Postwar Years _(2001).
Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan: Select Bibiography
Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia 1788–1930 [website], University of Newcastle, https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au.
Dwyer, Philip, Barbara Mann, Nigel Penn and Lyndall Ryan, Violent Empires: Killing and Colonialism in the Age of Empires (forthcoming 2025).
Dwyer, Philip and Lyndall Ryan (eds), Theatres of Violence: Massacre, Mass Killing and Atrocity throughout History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012).
Lydon, Jane and Lyndall Ryan (eds), Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre (Sydney: New South, 2018).
Nurka, Camille, Lyndall Ryan and Angela Wanhalla (eds), Aftermaths: Colonialism, Violence and Memory in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2023).
Ryan, Lyndall, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1981; second edition 1996).
Ryan, Lyndall, Tasmanian Aborigines: A History Since 1803 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012).
Ryan, Lyndall and Susan Magarey, Bibliography of Australian Women’s History (Parkville: Australian Historical Association, 1990).
Sheridan, Susan, with Barbara Baird, Kate Borrett and Lyndall Ryan, Who was that Woman? The Australian Women’s Weekly in the Postwar Years (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2001).
Taylor, Tony, ‘Australia’s “History Wars” Reignite,’ The Conversation, 31 March 2016, https://theconversation.com/australias-history-wars-reignite-57065.
VERA MACKIE is Emeritus Senior Professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia.
Mackie is also an active contributor to such publications as Australian Outlook, History Workshop Online, Intersections: Gender and Culture in Asia and the Pacific, Japan Focus, and VIDA: Blog of the Australian Women’s History Network.
Follow Vera on Twitter/X @veramackie.
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