About me

I am a religious and cultural historian.  My major research interests lie in the history of religion and imperialism particularly within the transnational boundaries of the nineteenth-century British empire. I am interested in big historical questions such as how religion serves to tie empires together (or tear them apart) and different sites of mission-led settler colonialism. I have written about religion and punishment, the history of religious orders, missions and missionaries, missionary linguistics, the history of the colonial Bible and 'colonial' missions to British settler colonies. My most recent book, Empire of Hell, winner of the Kay Daniels prize, provides a religious history of the campaign to end the transportation of British and Irish convicts.

I trained initially as a medieval historian at the University of Oxford and I continue to retain an interest in the history of comparative religions, empires and forms of belief across the Latin, Greek and Arabic global cultures.  

My current projects include a collaborative history of missions to seamen, and the history of the 'global bible', the plan to translate the bible into all the languages of the world. I am also writing a short history of the 'condemned sermon' at Newgate.

Major publications

Monographs

• The Colonial Bible in Australia (LangSci Press, 2024)
• Empire of Hell (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
• God's Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• Believing in Australia (Allen & Unwin, 1996)
• Courting Disaster (Macmillan, 1992)
• In the Best of Hands (Southwood Press, 1991)
• Truly Feminine Truly Catholic (University of New South Wales Press, 1987)

Edited collections

• Religion and Greater Ireland (with Colin Barr, McGill Queens University Press, 2015)
• Methodism in Australia (with Glen O'Brien, Ashgate, 2015)
• Church and State in Old and New Worlds (with John Gascoigne, Brill, 2011)
• Empires of Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

Virtual Bookshelf

Contact details

Teaching

I teach a range of courses for undergraduates and postgraduates in areas of my research expertise including HIST10046 Slavery,  HIST20120 Outlaws, HIST30122 Global Empires and HISTM0017 Themes in the History of Colonialism.

Research supervision

I am happy to supervise postgraduates in the fields of imperial religious history, histories of settler colonialism and topics in religious history more widely.