Melanie Nolan

Melanie Nolan is Professor of History, Director of the National Centre of Biography and the General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University. She was born in Reefton on the West Coast of New Zealand, attended the University of Canterbury, graduating with a BA in 1982 and an MA (Hons) in 1985 before being awarded an ANU Scholarship, graduating with a PhD in 1990. She lectured at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, for 16 years from the end of 1992 to 2008. Her research focuses on changes in work and workers, connecting labour and class, gender and women, and more recently) ethnicity in 20thC Australian and New Zealand history. Her book Kin. The Collective Biography of a Working-class New Zealand Family (2005) won the 2006 Archives and Records Association of New Zealand (ARANZ) Ian Wards Prize and was short-listed for the 2007 Ernest Scott Prize.