Dr Ben Silverstein
BA (Hons), LLB (Hons) (Melbourne), PhD (La Trobe)
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Research Centre for Deep History, School of History; Lecturer in Indigenous Studies
ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
Areas of expertise
- Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander History 210301
- Australian History (Excl. Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander History) 210303
Research interests
Indigenous histories, Deep history, settler colonialism, Australian history, histories of race.
Biography
Ben Silverstein researches in colonial and Indigenous histories, with a focus on Australia, southern and eastern Africa, and the Pacific. His work engages questions of race and settler colonialism as well as contests over sovereignties and colonial government. His first book, titled Governing Natives: Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia’s North (Manchester University Press, 2019), explores Australian articulations of indirect rule as a mode of governing Aboriginal people in the interwar period.
Publications
- Silverstein, B 2022, ''Throwing Mud' on Questions of Sovereignty: Race and Northern Arguments over White, Chinese, and Aboriginal Labour, 1905-12', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 564-583.
- Rademaker, L & Silverstein, B 2022, 'Deep Historicities', Interventions, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 137-160.
- Silverstein, B 2022, 'Theoretical Frontiers', in (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Global History, Routledge, Oxford, pp. 56-85.
- 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.
- Silverstein, B & McKinnon, C 2020, 'Preface', Aboriginal History, vol. 44.
- Urwin, J & Silverstein, B 2020, 'Governing Natives: Indirect Rule and Settler Colonialism in Australia's North, by Ben Silverstein. Conversation between Jessica Urwin and Ben Silverstein', ANU Historical Journal II, vol. 2, pp. 233-241.
- Carey, J & Silverstein, B 2020, 'Thinking with and beyond settler colonial studies: new histories after the postcolonial', Postcolonial Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 1-20.
- Silverstein, B 2020, 'Reading sovereignties in the shadow of settler colonialism: Chinese employment of Aboriginal labour in the Northern Territory of Australia', Postcolonial Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 43-57.
- Silverstein, B 2019, Governing Natives: Indirect rule and settler colonialism in Australia's north, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
- Silverstein, B 2018, 'The "Proper Settler" and the "Native Mind": Flogging Scandals in the Northern Territory, 1919 and 1932', in Penelope Edmonds and Amanda Nettelbeck (ed.), Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony, Palgrave Macmillan, Switzerland, pp. 89-114.
- Silverstein, B, ed., 2018, Conflict, Adaptation, Transformation: Richard Broome and the Practice of Aboriginal History , Aboriginal Studies Press, Australia.
- Silverstein, B 2018, 'Voyaging with hope: Richard Broome and the ethics of Aboriginal history', in Ben Silverstein (ed.), Conflict, Adaptation, Transformation: Richard Broome and the Practice of Aboriginal History, Aboriginal Studies Press, Australia, pp. 1-17pp.
- Silverstein, B & McLisky, C 2018, 'On Paternalisms and Aboriginal Agency: From missions to neoliberal policy in the work of Richard Broome and Noel Pearson', in Ben Silverstein (ed.), Conflict, Adaptation, Transformation: Richard Broome and the Practice of Aboriginal History, Aboriginal Studies Press, Australia, pp. 38-62.
- Silverstein, B 2017, "Possibly they did not know themselves": the ambivalent government of sex and work in the Northern Territory Aboriginals Ordinance 1918', History Australia, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 344-360.
- Silverstein, B 2016, 'Patrick Wolfe (1949-2016)', History Workshop Journal, vol. 82, no. 1, pp. 315-323.
- Silverstein, B & Silverstein, J 2015, 'A Politics of the Third Generation', in Esther Jilovsky, Jordana Silverstein, David Slucki (ed.), In the Shadows of Memory, Vallentine Mitchell Publishers, London, pp. 231-244.
- Silverstein, B 2013, 'Submerged Sovereignty: Native Title within a History of Incorporation', in Julie Evans, Ann Genovese, Alexander Reilly, Patrick Wolfe (ed.), Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, pp. 60-85.
- Silverstein, B & Wolfe, P 2012, 'Ideology', in Philippa Levine and John Marriott (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Imperial Histories, Ashgate Publishing Company, New York, pp. 471-489.
- Silverstein, B 2011, 'Indirect Rule in Australia: A Case Study in Settler Colonial Difference', in Fiona Bateman and Lionel Pilkington (ed.), Studies in Settler Colonialism, Palgrave Macmillan, United Kingdom, pp. 90-105.
- Silverstein, B 2011, 'From Population to Citizen: The Subjects of the 1939 Aboriginal New Deal in Australia's Northern Territory', Kontur: Culture, History, Politics, vol. 22, pp. 17-33.
- Silverstein, B 2009, 'The Local in the Global: The Value in Transnational History', Ex Plus Ultra, vol. 1, pp. 96-98.
- Silverstein, B 2007, 'The Rule of Native Title: A View of Mabo in the British Empire', Griffith Law Review, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 55-82.
