Michael L. Ondaatje

Michael L. Ondaajte

Michael L. Ondaatje is National Head of the School of Arts, and Associate Professor of History at the Australian Catholic University. Ondaatje was awarded his PhD, with Distinction, from the University of Western Australia in 2008. His thesis on contemporary American political history was recognized with the Robert Street Prize for the most outstanding PhD across all of the University’s disciplines. In 2010 Ondaatje’s first book, Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America, was a Top 20 bestseller in US history. In 2011 the book was recognized with the Newcastle Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence, and in 2012 was shortlisted for the Australian Historical Association’s Hancock Prize. Ondaatje has been a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University, and in 2012 the Australian Academy of the Humanities awarded him the Max Crawford Medal, ‘Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities’. Ondaatje is also the winner of several teaching awards at the national and university level, and a regular media commentator on US history and politics. He has been interviewed on more than 200 occasions on the ABC, Channel Ten, Sky News and SBS, and has delivered numerous public lectures, including the Annual Human Rights Day Address at the United Nations Association of Australia in 2011. In 2013 Ondaatje was selected by the US Embassy in Australia for the International Visitor Leadership Program, the premier professional exchange program of the US government