DR. CATIE GILCHRIST is an Honorary Associate in the history department at the University of Sydney. She has an MA in History, The University of Glasgow, an MA in Women’s History, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, The University of London, and received her doctorate from the University of Sydney in 2004 for her PhD thesis, Male Convict Sexuality in the Penal Colonies of Australia, 1820–1850. The thesis explored “the moral and sexual anxieties produced by the transportation of male convicts.” It argued that “male sexuality lay at the heart of penal and colonial political discourse” and that “the moral and sexual anxieties of colonial society…were both real and imagined. They informed a variety of discourses that linked the colonial periphery with the metropolitan centre in a relationship that was reciprocal but also antagonistic.” Read more>> 

Dr. Gilchrist has had articles published in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, the Journal of Australian Colonial History and the Journal of Australian Studies. She has authored a chapter, “Defending honour in Australian settler societies,” in the edited collection by Penny Russell and Nigel Worden (eds.), Honourable Intentions? Violence and Virtue in Australian and Cape Colonies, c 1750 to 1850, (London: Routledge, 2016). Catie has also contributed many diverse articles to the Dictionary of Sydney and wrote the “Randwick Heritage” walking tour for the free Dictionary of Sydney Walks app. Read more>>

In 2018, Dr. Gilchrist was awarded a highly commended honorary fellowship (the Nancy Keesing Fellowship) at the State Library of New South Wales, for her project “Make haste and go tell the Coroner!”: Investigating death in colonial Sydney.” Her first book, Murder, Misadventure and Miserable Ends: Tales from a Colonial Coroner’s Court, was published by HarperCollins Australia in February 2019. In her spare time, she writes book reviews and, as an enthusiastic taphophile (tombstone tourist), regularly visits Sydney cemeteries.

Qualifications

• PhD (History) University of Sydney (2004)
• MA (Arts) (Women’s History) Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London (1998)
• MA (Arts in History) (Hons I) University of Glasgow (1997)

Contributions

• Elizabeth Bourke: A Much-Lamented Lady
• Catherine Crowley: A Convict Sea Wife
• Mary Rowe: At What Price Theft?
• D’Arcy Wentworth: A Gentleman Rogue

Follow Dr. Catie Gilchrist on Twitter: @historywhore