Dr Laura Rademaker
Research interests
Indigenous history, ‘deep’ history, gender and women’s history, religious history, oral history and memory, language and cross-cultural encounters, Christian missions.
Biography
Laura Rademaker is an ARC DECRA research fellow. She is the author of Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission (University of Hawai’i Press, 2018) on language and cross-cultural exchange at Christian missions to Aboriginal people, awarded the 2020 Hancock Prize. Her work explores the possibilities of ‘cross-culturalising’ history, interdisciplinary histories as well as oral history and memory. At present, is contributing to the Deep Human Past project, seeking to tell the ‘deep’ history of Australia and expand notions of history and the past. She is also working on a book about the Tiwi Islands and Aboriginal encounters with Catholicism as well as researching the closing of Christian missions, secularisation and Indigenous self-determination. She is co-editor of the Journal of Religious History and associate monographs editor for Aboriginal history Monographs.
Researcher's projects
DE220100042 Self-determination for Indigenous Australia: histories, visions and voice
This project aims to understand what self-determination meant over the late twentieth century, when missions were transformed into Aboriginal communities of today. It expects to generate new knowledge of how selfdetermination brought new freedoms, rights and opportunities to Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, even as it meant new challenges. Expected outcomes include methods for collaborative community-based research, giving voice to historical Indigenous experiences. The project will provide significant benefits for policymakers engaging with remote Indigenous communities and generate deeper cultural understanding and
awareness of an important era in Australia’s Indigenous history.
SR200200062 Art at a crossroads: Aboriginal responses to contact in northern Australia
This research targets a vital chapter in Australia’s history: Aboriginal responses to ‘contact’ with newcomers to their land. While there is a lack of representation of Aboriginal people in the traditional archives, Aboriginal people did record their experiences in art. This project, therefore, focuses on the artistic record, in particular the rock art and bark paintings created during the last 400 years in western Arnhem Land – as key visual references of a firsthand record of Australia’s history. In this project, we will examine the ways Aboriginal people used art to navigate threats and opportunities in northern Australia while, at the same time, developing a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of Australia’s history.
Available student projects
Aboriginal history, Christian missions, Australian religious history, deep history
Current student projects
Kathryn Wells - Aboriginal music and political movements in the 20th Century
Publications
- May, S, Rademaker, L, Goldhahn, J et al. 2021, 'Narlim's Fingerprints: Aboriginal Histories and Rock Art', Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 292-316.
- Rademaker, L 2021, '60,000 Years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts', Postcolonial Studies.
- McGrath, A, Rademaker, L & Silverstein, B 2021, 'Deep history and deep listening: Indigenous knowledges and the narration of deep pasts', Rethinking History, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 307-326.
- Rademaker, L 2020, 'An emerging Protestant doctrine of self-determination in the Northern Territory', in Laura Rademaker & Tim Rowse (ed.), Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia: Histories and Historiography, ANU Press, Canberra, Australia, pp. 59-81.
- Rademaker, L 2020, 'Going Off Script: Aboriginal Rejection and Repurposing of English Literacies', in Tony Ballantine, Lachy Paterson & Angela Wanhalla (ed.), Indigenous Textual Cultures Reading and Writing in the Age of Global Empire, Duke University Press, Durham & London, pp. 195-216.
- Rademaker, L & Rowse, T 2020, 'How shall we write the history of self-determination in Australia?', in Laura Rademaker & Tim Rowse (ed.), Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia: Histories and Historiography, ANU Press, Canberra, Australia, pp. 1-39.
- Rademaker, L & Rowse, T, eds, 2020, Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia: Histories and Historiography, ANU Press, Canberra, Australia.
- Rademaker, L 2020, 'Eaglehawk and Crow: Aboriginal knowledges, imperial networks and the evolution of religion', Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 21, no. 3.
- Rademaker, L 2019, 'The Polygamy Question: Missions, Marriage, and Assimilation', Journal of Religious History, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 251-268.
- Rademaker, L 2018, Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission, University of Hawaii Press, United States.
- Rademaker, L 2019, 'White grief, happy friendship: Jane Goodale and emotional anthropological research', History and Anthropology, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 313pp-330pp.
- Rademaker, L 2018, 'Going Native: Converting Narratives in Tiwi Histories of Twentieth-Century Missions', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 70, 1 (2018): 98-118.
- Rademaker, L 2017, 'The Importance of Marrying "Straight": Aboriginal Marriage and Mission Monogamy in Twentieth-century North Australia', Gender and History, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 641-657pp.
- Rademaker, L 2018, 'Gender, Race and Twentieth-Century Dissenting Traditions', in Mark P. Hutchinson (ed.), The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume V: The Twentieth Century: Themes and Variations in a Global Context, Oxford University Press, United Kingdom, pp. 416pp-442.
- Rademaker, L 2018, Answers found in translation.
- Rademaker, L 2019, 'Law, Land and Activism', History Australia, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 230-232.
- Rademaker, L 2016, 'Why historians need linguists (and linguists need historians)', in P K Austin, H Koch & J Simpson (ed.), Language Land & Song: Studies in Honour of Luise Hercus, EL Publishing, London, United Kingdom, pp. 480-491pp.
- Rademaker, L 2016, ''We want a good mission not rubish please': Aboriginal petitions and mission nostalgia', Aboriginal History, vol. 40, pp. 119-143pp.
- Rademaker, L 2016, 'Religion for the Modern Girl: Maude Royden in Australia, 1928', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 31, no. 89, pp. 336-354pp.
- Rademaker, L 2016, '‘Only cuppa tea Christians’: colonisation, authentic indigeneity and the missionary linguist', History Australia, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 228-242pp.
- Rademaker, L 2015, 'Missions and Aboriginal difference: Judith Stokes and Australian missionary linguistics', Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 66-78pp.
- Rademaker, L 2015, 'Mission, Politics and Linguistic Research: The case of the Anindilyakwa language of North Australia', Historiographia Linguistica, vol. 42, no. 2-3, pp. 379-400pp.
- Rademaker, L 2014, 'Language and Australian Aboriginal history', History Australia, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 222-240.
- Rademaker, L 2012, ''I had more children than most people': Single Women's Missionary Maternalism in Arnhem Land, 1908-1945', Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, vol. 17 and 18, pp. 7-22pp.
- Rademaker, L 2011, 'Book review: Jennifer Clark, Aborigines & Activism and Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese & Alexander Reilly, Rights and Redemption', Canberra Historical Journal, vol. 66, pp. 56-58pp.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Self-determination for Indigenous Australia: histories, visions and voice (Primary Investigator)
- Art at a crossroads: Aboriginal responses to contact in northern Australia (Primary Investigator)