Staff Profile

Michael Ondaatje is Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Newcastle and a Research Associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

RESEARCH

In 2008 Ondaatje was awarded his PhD, with Distinction, from the University of Western Australia. His thesis in African American political history was recognised with the Robert Street Prize for the most outstanding PhD across all University disciplines. In 2010 Ondaatje’s first book, Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press and became a Top 20 International Bestseller in American History. In 2011 the book was recognised with the University of Newcastle Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence, and in 2012 was shortlisted for the Australian Historical Association's W.K. Hancock Prize (receiving a High Commendation).

Ondaatje’s research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the United States Studies Centre (University of Sydney) and the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. In 2011, he was awarded a Senior Visiting Fellowship at Oxford and, more recently, was selected for the Emerging Research Leaders program at the University of Newcastle.  

In 2012 the Australian Academy of the Humanities awarded Ondaatje the Max Crawford Medal, ‘Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities’. The Crawford Medal is ‘granted to early career Australian researchers for outstanding scholarly achievement in the humanities in Australia, and to those whose publications make an exceptional contribution to the understanding of humanities disciplines by the general public’. In 2013 Ondaatje was selected by the US Embassy in Australia for the International Visitor Leadership Program, the premier exchange program of the US government ( for details, see: http://osce.usmission.gov/archive/misc/press_ivp.html">http://osce.usmission.gov/archive/misc/press_ivp.html</a>). He is currently co-editor of the Australasian Journal of American Studies and an Executive Member of the Australian Historical Association.

TEACHING

Ondaatje is the winner of several major teaching awards at the national, university and faculty level, including an ALTC Award for Teaching Excellence (2011); an ALTC Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2010); the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence (2010); and a Faculty of Education and Arts Award for Teaching Excellence (2009). Since 2007 he has supervised 15 Honours theses and 2 PhDs to completion.

MEDIA AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

Beyond the walls of the University, Ondaatje is a regular media commentator on American history and politics. He has been interviewed on hundreds of occasions on the ABC, Channel Ten, Sky News and SBS, as well as overseas in the United States and United Kingdom. In Australia his writing has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Canberra Times and The Conversation. Since 2008 Ondaatje has also been invited to deliver scores of public lectures and keynote addresses, most notably the Annual Human Rights Day Address at the United Nations Association of Australia (2011).