Australian historian (1949 – 2016)
Patrick Wolfe (1949 – February 18, 2016)[1] was an Australian historian and scholar who is often credited with establishing the field of settler colonial studies.[2] He made significant contributions to several academic fields, including anthropology, genocide studies, Indigenous studies, and the historiography of race, colonialism, and imperialism.[3]
Biography
Wolfe was born to an Irish Catholic and German Jewish Yorkshire family, and educated Jesuit.[1] In the 1970s he collaborated with Sibnarayan Ray and Greg Dening as an undergraduate.[1] Along with Maurice Bloch, he began his post-graduate studies in social anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.[1] He then went on to pursue his doctorate with Greg Dening under the supervision of Dipesh Chakrabarty.[1] As a doctoral student he taught Aboriginal history at the University of Melbourne.[1] He was associated with a number of universities in Australia as a teacher and researcher, including Victoria University and La Trobe University. Wolfe held fellowships at Harvard and Stanford among other places.[4] He never held an academic tenure or a permanent university position.[5] His research spanned race and colonialism around the world.[6]
Wolfe's home was Healesville on Wurundjeri country. At his memorial service, Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, a Wurundjeri Elder, stated that Wolfe was a cherished friend of the Wurundjeri people.[5]
