Classics researcher awarded inaugural ABR Gender Fellowship

Friday, 26 May 2017

Professor Marguerite Johnson from the School of Humanities and Social Science has been named as the inaugural Australia Book Review 2017 Gender Fellow.

Associate Professor Marguerite Johnson

Each year Australian Book Review (ABR) offers several Fellowships and are intended to reward outstanding Australian writers, to enhance ABR through the publication of long-form journalism, and to advance the magazine’s commitment to ideas and critical debate.

Professor Johnson’s project is titled ‘Mapping Gender, Sexuality and the Environment: Picnic at Hanging Rock Fifty Years On’ and it will be published by ABR later in 2017.

‘Arguably, there is no novel like Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock when it comes to mapping Australia’s gender, sexuality and environmental histories,” Professor Johnson explained.

“Unlike Miranda, it simply refuses to remain lost in the vastness of Victoria’s Macedon Ranges. On the fiftieth anniversary of Lindsay’s novel, it is timely to review and reassess it, and to revisit some of the works it has spawned.”


Marguerite Johnson is Professor of Ancient History and Classical Languages in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. An interdisciplinary cultural historian and comparative cultural analyst, she is the author of four books and countless articles and chapters. Her research expertise is predominantly in the area of ancient Mediterranean cultural studies, particularly in representations of gender, sexualities and the body. She is especially interested in the ways in which the ancients write about women. Her books include Sappho (2007), Boudicca (2012), and Ovid on Cosmetics (2016). She is a regular contributor to The Conversation and the ABC.