Patrick Wolfe (1949 – 18 February 2016) was an Australian historian and scholar who made significant contributions to several academic fields, including anthropology,

genocide studies Genocide studies is an academic field of study that researches genocide. Genocide became a field of study in the mid-1940s, with the work of Raphael Lemkin, who coined ''genocide'' and started genocide research, and its primary subjects were the ...

Indigenous studies Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

, and the historiography of race, colonialism, and imperialism. He is often credited with establishing the field of settler colonial studies.

About

Wolfe was born to an

Irish Catholic Irish Catholics are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland whose members are both Catholic and Irish. They have a large diaspora, which includes over 36 million American citizens and over 14 million British citizens (a quarter of the Briti ...

and

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

Yorkshire family, and educated Jesuit. In the 1970s he collaborated with

Sibnarayan Ray Sibnarayan Ray (1921–2008) was an Indian thinker, educationist, philosopher and literary critic who wrote in the Bengali language. A radical humanist, he is widely reputed for his works on Marxist-revolutionary Manabendra Nath Roy, and famou ...

and

Greg Dening Greg Dening (1931 – 13 March 2008) was an Australian historian of the Pacific. Dening was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. He was educated at two Jesuit schools: St. Louis School in Perth and Xavier College in Melbourne. He received an M ...

as an undergraduate. Along with

Maurice Bloch Maurice Émile Félix Bloch (born 21 October 1939 in Caen, Calvados, France) is a British anthropologist. He is famous for his fieldwork on the shift of agriculturalists in Madagascar, Japan and other parts of the world, and has also contribut ...

, he began his post-graduate studies in social anthropology at the

London School of Economics and Political Science The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

. He then went on to pursue his doctorate with

under the supervision of

Dipesh Chakrabarty Dipesh Chakrabarty (born 1948, in Kolkata, India) is an Indian historian, who has also made contributions to postcolonial theory and subaltern studies. He is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in history at the University ...

. As a doctoral student he taught

Aboriginal history ''Aboriginal History'' is an annual peer-reviewed academic journal published as an open access journal by Aboriginal History Inc. It was established in 1977 (co-founded and edited by Diane Barwick) and covers interdisciplinary historical studies ...

at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

. He was associated with a number of universities in Australia as a teacher and researcher, including Victoria University and

La Trobe University La Trobe University is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora. The university was established in 1964, becoming the third university in the state of Victoria a ...

. Wolfe held fellowships at Harvard and Stanford among other places. He never held an

academic tenure Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...

or a permanent university position. His research spanned race and colonialism around the world. Wolfe's home was

Healesville Healesville is a town in Victoria, Australia, 52 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district, located within the Shire of Yarra Ranges local government area. Healesville recorded a population of 7,589 in the 2021 census. H ...

on Wurundjeri country. At his memorial service,

Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin Auntie or aunty is an informal form of the word aunt. They may also refer to: __NOTOC__ Broadcasting * Aunty, an informal name for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation * Auntie, an informal name for the British Broadcasting Corporation ** "Aunt ...

, a

Wurundjeri The Wurundjeri people are an Australian Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourn ...

Elder, stated that Wolfe was a cherished friend of the Wurundjeri people.

Works

Monographs: * ''Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology'' (1999) * ''Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race'' (2016) Edited Collections: * ''The Settler Complex: Recuperating Binarism in Colonial Studies'' (editor Patrick Wolfe, 2016) * ''Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility,'' co-edited by Julie Evans, Ann Genovese, Alexander Reilly, and Patrick Wolfe (2012)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolfe, Patrick Australian historians Australian anthropologists Historians of colonialism Historians of genocides Historians of Australia Academics from Yorkshire 2016 deaths 1949 births Alumni of the London School of Economics University of Melbourne alumni La Trobe University faculty Victoria University, Melbourne faculty Australian indigenous rights activists Australian people of German-Jewish descent Australian people of Irish descent