Clare Wright

Professor Clare Wright OAM is an award-winning historian, author, broadcaster, podcaster and public commentator who has worked in politics, academia and the media. Clare is currently Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University.

She is the author of five works of history, including the best-selling The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (winner of the 2014 Stella Prize) and You Daughters of Freedom. Her latest book, and the final instalment in her Democracy Trilogy, is the highly acclaimed Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions, which won the Queensland Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the NT History Book Award and Australian Political Book of the Year Award. Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian History, the Victorian Premiers Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the Age Book of the Year Award for Non-Fiction, the NSW History Award for the Australian History Prize, the ABIA Award's Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year for Non-Fiction, the Walkley Book Award, and the NSW Literary Award for the Douglas Stuart Prize for Nonfiction, and was also longlisted for Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.  

Clare has written and presented history documentaries for ABC TV and is Associate Producer of the feature film One Mind One Heart, written/directed by Larissa Behrendt, which won the NSW Digital History Award. She also hosts the ABC Radio National history podcast, Shooting the Past, co-hosts the La Trobe University podcast Archive Fever (with Yves Rees) and is Executive Producer of Hey History! the first Australian history podcast designed for use in the classroom.

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’. Clare is Chair of the National Museum of Australia Council and past Board Director of the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas.