Alison Bashford

Alison Caroline Bashford, is a historian specialising in global history and the history of science. She is Laureate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales and Director of the Laureate Centre for History & Population. Alison Bashford was previously Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge.

Academic career

From 1996 to 2009, Bashford was a lecturer in history at the University of Sydney. She was appointed Professor of Modern History in 2009. Between 2009 and 2010, Bashford held the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. Moving to England, she was Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge from 2013 to 2017. Since 2017, she has been Research Professor of History at the University of New South Wales and Director of the New Earth Histories Research Program.
Bashford has also held visiting positions at Warwick University and University College, London.
Bashford has published six books, including An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family ''Purity and Pollution: Gender, Embodiment and Victorian Medicine, Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Public Health, Global Population: History, Geopolitics and Life on Earth and The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus: Re-reading the Principle of Population , and has edited seven, including Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present, the Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, and Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People''. Her current work focuses on cosmopolitan histories of modern earth sciences.

In 2010, Bashford was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In July 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
In 2021 she was awarded the Dan David Prize. She won the 2023 Nib Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2023 Cundill History Prize for The Huxleys.

Besides a number of book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles, Bashford has written or edited the following books:

Purity and Pollution: Gender, Embodiment and Victorian Medicine.
Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and Public Health.
Griffith Taylor: Visionary, Environmentalist, Explorer. Co-authored with Carolyn Strange.
Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth. The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus: Re-reading the Principle of Population. Co-authored with Joyce E. Chaplin.
An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family,. The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution,.

Contagion: Historical and Cultural Studies. Co-edited with Claire Hooker. New edition: Contagion: Epidemics, history and culture from smallpox to anthrax.
Isolation: Places and Practices of Exclusion. Co-edited with Carolyn Strange.
Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security from 1850 to the Present .
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Co-edited with Philippa Levine.
The Cambridge History of Australia, 2 vols. Co-edited with Stuart Macintyre.
Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People. Co-edited with David Armitage.
Oceanic Histories, with David Armitage and Sujit Sivasundaram.