Dr Robert Foster

Biography/ Background

Robert specialises in South Australian Aboriginal History as well as comparative Indigenous History. His book, Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory, co-authored with Amanda Nettelbeck and Rick Hosking, won the John Tregenza prize for South Australian History in 2002 and was short-listed for the NSW Premier's Prize for Literature. His most recent book, In the Name of the Law: William Willshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier, co-authored with Amanda Nettelbeck, was published in 2007.  A reviewer in Australian Historical Studies described it as an 'outstanding study', demonstrating 'to a degree unprecedented in the scholarship on the frontier ... how policing worked during the transition from contested sovereignty over Aboriginal land to the establishment of government authority ... a book that deserves to be on the reading list of any guide to essential reading in Australian history'.

Robert and Amanda have recently completed a study of 'The South Australian Frontier in History and Memory', funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant. In 2010 Robert and Amanda commenced a new collaborative project: a comparative study of how Indigenous peoples were policed on the colonial frontiers of Australia and Canada. Funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, they will work with partner investigators in Canada: Professor Russell Smandych of the University of Manitoba and Emeritus Professor Lou Knafla of the University of Calgary.

Research Interests

• History and Memory
• The frontiers of Australia and western Canada
• Aboriginal Labour and the Pastoral Industry
• Native Title
• Aboriginal Policy and Administration
• Comparative Indigenous History

Publications

For a full listing of Robert Foster's publications, please see attached document.

Books and Monographs - Joint Author Works

Robert Foster & Amanda Nettelbeck, Out of the Silence: The History and Memory of Australia's Frontier Wars, Wakefield Press, In Press 2011/12.

 

Amanda Nettelbeck & Robert Foster, In the Name of the Law: William Willshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier, Wakefield Press, 2007.

 

Robert Foster, P. Monaghan & P. Mühlhäusler, Dictionary of 19th Century South Australian Aboriginal English, Pacific Linguistics Monograph Series, 2003.

          

Robert Foster, Rick Hosking & Amanda Nettelbeck, Fatal Collisions: the South Australian frontier and the violence of memory, Wakefield Press, 2001.

 

Journal Articles And Book Chapters

Robert Foster, ‘His Majesty’s most gracious and benevolent intentions’, Special Issue of the Journal of Australian Colonial History, forthcoming 2012.

Robert Foster & Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘ “As fine a body of men’: How the Royal Canadian Mounted Police brought law and order to the Australian Frontier’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, forthcoming 2012.

Robert Foster & Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘On the Trail of the Great March West: The North West Mounted Police in western Canadian Historical memory, Place and Replace, University of Manitoba Press, Forthcoming 2012.

Amanda Nettelbeck & Robert Foster. ‘Colonial Judiciaries, Aboriginal Protection and South Australia’s Policy of Punishing ‘with Exemplary Severity’, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 41, No 3, 2010, pp 319-336.

Amanda Nettelbeck & Robert Foster, 2010.‘Commemorating Foundation: A Study in Regional Historical Memory’, History Australia, Vol. 7. No. 3, 2010, pp. 53.1-53.18.

Amanda Nettelbeck & Robert Foster, ‘The Central Australian Frontier and the Struggle to Remember’ in Jim Aulrich, et al, eds, The Politics of Cultural Memory, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 183-196.

Robert Foster, ‘ “Don’t mention the war’: Frontier violence and the language of concealment’, History Australia, vol. 6 No. 3, December 2009, pp. 68.1-.68.15.

Robert Foster & Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘The Rule of Law on the South Australian Frontier’, Legal History, vol. 13, no. 2, 2009, pp 34-52.

Robert Foster & Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘Reading the Elusive Letter of the Law: Policing the Australian Frontier’, Australian Historical Studies, 2007, vol 38, no 130.

Robert Foster, ‘Co-existence and Colonization on Pastoral Lands in South Australia, 1851-1899’, in Despotic Dominion: Property Rights in British Settler Societies, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 2005.

Robert Foster & Amanda Nettelbeck,  ‘Writing William Willshire’, in S. Magarey & K. Round, eds, Living History: Essays on History as Biography, Adelaide, Australian Humanities Press, 2005, pp 79-92.

Robert Foster & Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘White Indigeneity: The Life and Fiction of William Willshire’, in S. Schech & B. Wadham, eds, Placing Race and Localising Whiteness, Flinders Press, 2004, pp. 133-142.

Mandy Paul & Robert Foster, ‘Married to the Land: Land Grants to Aboriginal Women in South Australia, 1848-1911, Australian Historical Studies, No. 121, April 2003.

‘Rations, Co-existence and the colonisation of Aboriginal Labour in South Australia, 1860-1911', Aboriginal History, vol. 24, 2000. 

‘“Endless Trouble and Agitation”: Aboriginal Activism in the Protectionist Era', Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 2000. 

‘Paper Yabber: the messenger and the message', Aboriginal History, vol. 22, 2000.

Files

• Robert Foster's Publications - Foster_Publications_October2011.rtf [69.5K] (application/rtf)

Expertise for Media Contact

Categories	History, Aboriginal & Indigenous issues
Expertise	Aboriginal people and issues (history), esp. South Australian Aboriginal history
Notes	Alt phone: (08) 8303 5611

Entry last updated: Sunday, 5 Feb 2012