In 1984 she was awarded a PhD from La Trobe University for her thesis "We grew up the stations: Europeans, aborigines and cattle in the Northern Territory".[1]
Career
McGrath won the John Barrett Award for an article in 1994. McGrath was founding director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, established within the ANU School of History on 28 March 2003. She resigned this position in 2019 to create the Research Centre for Deep History within the School,[2] a position she continues to hold as of 2023[update].
As of 2023[update] she is the WK Hancock Chair of History at ANU. She is also director of the Research Centre for Deep History, and was Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate Fellow 2017–2022.[3]
Recognition
She was the inaugural winner of the W.K. Hancock prize of the Australian Historical Association for her first book, Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country, in 1988. In 1994, she was awarded the Human Rights Non-Fiction Award for Creating a Nation jointly with co-authors Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake and Marian Quartly.[4]
She was awarded the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellowship for her project on the history of Australia, combining Indigenous stories with scientific data in 2017.[10] Also in 2017, she was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.[11]
Curthoys, Ann; McGrath, Ann (2000). Writing histories: Imagination and narration. Clayton, Vic.: School of Historical Studies, Monash University. ISBN0-7326-1768-5.
Curthoys, Ann; McGrath, Ann (2009), How to write history that people want to read, University of New South Wales Press, ISBN978-1-74223-086-3
McGrath, Ann (December 2015), Illicit love: Interracial sex and marriage in the United States and Australia, Lincoln University of Nebraska Press (published 2015), ISBN978-0-8032-8541-5