Dr Michael Powell Research and Writing

About Dr Michael Powell

Dr Michael Powell is an Adjunct Researcher at the University of Tasmanian and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle

Michael was a lecturer in History at UTAS specialising in 19th and 20th century Australian History, Aboriginal History, and the 19th century colonial history of Ceylon.

He has worked as a principal of a special school for children with behavioural difficulties, as a ministerial aid, farmer and university lecturer.

His interest is in the colonial setting, the powerful global story of empire in Australia and Southeast Asia but also the philosophic and religious values encountered in that movement.

Current: Adjunct Researcher at the University of Tasmania and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle.

Publications: Articles and Books

Reassessing Australian First Contact Aboriginal Resistance in Sydney 1788-1805: Psychic Invasion of a Narrative Landscape and a Nativist Response. (forthcoming).

Bennelong and Musquito, Collaboration and Resistance: Exploring Indigenous and European Responses to Occupation.  (forthcoming).

[Book] Musquito: Brutality and Exile: Aboriginal Resistance in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Hobart: Fullers, 2016)

The Clanking of Mediaeval Chains: Banishment in the British Empire. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, April 2016.

 [chapter in a book] Religion, Land Policy and Colonial Skulduggery in Colonial Ceylon a Publication honouring Prof. Vini Vitharana, Sri Lanka, (Colombo, April 2015) 

Assessing Magnitude: Tasmanian Population, Resistance and the Significance of Musquito in the Black War, History Compass, August 2015.

Fragile Identities: The Colonial Conflicts of CJR Le Mesurier in Ceylon. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Johns Hopkins University, April 2010.

Making Tribes? Constructing Aboriginal Tribal Entities in Sydney and Coastal NSW from the Early Colonial Period to the Present. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, September 2010.

Thomas Conquit: Conquering a colonial past. The Journal of Australian Colonial History Vol.8 2006.

[book] Manual of a Mystic- A Buddhist Scholar in Ceylon and Tasmania. #5 in Historical Survey of Northern Tasmanian series. (Canberra: Karuda Press, 2001)

[book] Woodward of Mahinda Cultural and Religious Themes in the Life of FL Woodward. (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sarvodaya Vishva Lekha Press, 2001).

The Historic Significance of FL Woodward Woodward Memorial Oration, Royal Asiatic Society, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1998.

The Whitlam Government: Barnard and Whitlam, a Significant Historical Dyad. The Australian Journal of Politics and History Vol.43 No.2 1997.

Uncle Christophoros (short story) Southerly Summer 1996-97.

Exile (short story) Island Magazine Summer 1995-96