Councillors

Councillors

Samantha Owen  |  President

Samantha is President of the History Council of Western Australia and an Associate Professor at Curtin University, where she served as Director of Gender Equity and Inclusion (2023-2026) and Academic Co-Lead of the Gender Research Network. She is a historian whose research focuses on gender, contested histories, and nationalism, with a particular interest in how communities form and transform. Samantha holds a PhD in History from the University of Reading (UK), an MA in History from the University of Pittsburgh, and a BA (First Class Honours) in History and Anthropology from the University of Western Australia. From 2023-2026 she was also Academic Co-Lead of a DFAT-funded women’s leadership program in Vietnam and has a long-standing commitment to public history and advocacy.

Jane King – Treasurer

Jane is a multidisciplinary historian with specialist expertise in fine arts, economic and cultural history. She recently retired as Deputy Director of the John Curtin Gallery at Curtin University, a role she held for many years, and has since worked as a part-time historian and consultant. Jane is currently President of the Museum and Galleries Association of Western Australia (AMAGA WA), an organisation she has been involved with for over twenty years. She brings significant experience in governance, cultural institutions, and the museum and galleries sector to her role as Treasurer of HCWA.

Naomi Preston  – Interim Secretary

Naomi joined HCWA in October 2024 as the Postgraduate Representative. She recently completed her PhD and has been working in research and teaching roles. Naomi is drawn to HCWA for its connections between academic historians and those working in industry and the public sector.

Lucy Hair – Interim Secretary 

Lucy is a Professional Historian with considerable experience working on commissioned history and heritage projects. She has worked for State Government, Local Government and as a private consultant. She has worked as the Research Coordinator at the Centre for WA History and is a previous Member of the Heritage Council’s Register Committee. Most recently she was the Project Officer for the ‘Two Centuries of Chinese Heritage in Western Australia’ project at UWA. She is currently the Vice-President of Professional Historians Association (WA).

Sue Lefroy  – Membership Secretary

Sue has been a committee member of the History Council of Western Australia since 2021, serving as the Council’s regional representative and Membership Secretary. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and works in the public sector as Local History Coordinator of History Great Southern– Kaartdijin Biddi Albany, a reference collection of documentary heritage material in the Albany Public Library.  She is the WALGA representative and Chair of the DCWA Community Advisory Group and brings a strong commitment to ensuring that regional voices and perspectives are represented within HCWA’s activities and advocacy.

Committee Members

André Brett

Dr André Brett is a Lecturer in History at Curtin University. He is a historian of Australia and New Zealand, with an emphasis on political, economic, environmental, and transport themes. He is the author of four books and the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2021 Max Crawford Medal from the Australian Academy of the Humanities for early-career achievement in the humanities. He received his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2014.

Erica Boyne

Erica holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from the University of Oregon and a Master of Arts in Public History from Portland State University. She moved to Western Australia in 2010, working as a Grants and Community Development Officer at the Town of Mosman Park and as a Curator at Subiaco Museum and the WA Museum. In February 2023, she was appointed Head of History at the WA Museum Boola Bardip.

Elizabeth Burns-Dans

Elizabeth is a Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University. Her research engages with the History of Experience as a methodological approach, exploring how we might access and understand human experiences of the past through art. Her particular focus encompasses art history, theory and criticism, and medieval and Renaissance history. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame Australia, where her doctoral thesis examined Parisian artists and the Book of Hours in early sixteenth-century print culture, and her MPhil explored the dark Romanticism of Francisco de Goya.

Toni Church

Toni is a museum curator at Boola Bardip. Her PhD thesis explored the representation of women in Australian museums and galleries, with a curatorial focus on the agency and autonomy of the earliest European women who travelled to Western Australia. Toni’s museum experience spans curatorial, collections management, registration, travelling exhibitions, and exhibition development with the Western Australian Museum, National Anzac Centre, Sydney Living Museums, and the Law Society of Western Australia.

Joseph Christensen

Dr Joseph Christensen is a Lecturer in History at the University of Western Australia, where he completed both his BA (Honours) and PhD. His research sits at the intersection of maritime and environmental history, with a focus on Western Australia in regional and global contexts and a strong track record of multidisciplinary collaboration. He has worked individually and in research teams on histories of fisheries, cyclones and extreme tropical weather, pearling industries, and environmental conservation, and has undertaken a range of commissioned projects in Western Australian history. His most recent book, Not Just a Bunnings Man: The Life and Times of Tom (G.M.) Bunning, was published by UWA Publishing in 2026. Joseph is a collaborator in the Appraising Risk, Past and Present Partnership at the Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, and maintains research connections in the United Kingdom, Singapore, and India.

Sian Ferraz

Sian Ferraz is an experienced heritage professional with over ten years in the state government heritage sector in Western Australia. She has held a variety of historian, heritage, and conservation-related roles, developing a broad understanding of the history and development of Western Australia through this lens.

Shino Konishi  – Indigenous Representative

Dr Shino Konishi FAHA is a Yawuru historian and Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia, where she also holds an ARC Future Fellowship and serves as Head of Section for Indigenous Studies. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. Her research explores diverse aspects of Indigenous and colonial history, including cross-cultural encounters in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Australia, European and French exploration, representations of Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous labour history, and biography. She has recently co-edited Reframing Indigenous Biography (2025) and leads the ARC Future Fellowship project An Aboriginal History of Western Australia (2025-2028).

Justin Owen

Justin is an Architect with experience in heritage architecture and heritage landscapes in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Western Australia, including work on Grade 1 and Grade 2 listed buildings. He is a staff member at Curtin University’s School of Architecture, where he is involved in the revision and reframing of the History and Theory components of the curriculum.

Paul Arthur

Professor Paul Arthur is Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow and Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. He speaks and publishes widely on the major challenges facing twenty-first-century society, from the global impacts of technology on communication, culture, and identity to migration and human rights. He has over 100 publications including 13 books, and has received more than A$10 million in research grant funding. His most recent book is Open Scholarship in the Humanities (Bloomsbury, 2024, with Lydia Hearn). A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Paul Arthur completed his PhD at the University of Western Australia and has held visiting positions at leading institutions in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America. He has strong ties to Western Australia’s history and heritage sector.