Patrick Wolfe (1949 – 18 February 2016) was an English historian and scholar who lived and wrote in Australia. Born into an

Irish Catholic Irish Catholics () are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland, defined by their adherence to Catholic Christianity and their shared Irish ethnic, linguistic, and cultural heritage.The term distinguishes Catholics of Irish descent, particul ...

and

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

family in Yorkshire, England, his works are credited with establishing the field of settler colonial studies. He also 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 There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

, and the historiography of race, colonialism, and imperialism.

Biography

Wolfe was born to an

and

family in Yorkshire where he received a

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

education. In the 1970s he collaborated with Sibnarayan Ray and Greg Dening as an undergraduate. Along with

Maurice Bloch Maurice Émile Félix Bloch (born 21 October 1939) 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 contributed important neo-Marxian w ...

, he began his post-graduate studies in

social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

at the

London School of Economics and Political Science The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public university, public research university in London, England, and a member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the University ...

. He then went on to pursue his doctorate with Greg Dening under the supervision of

Dipesh Chakrabarty Dipesh Chakrabarty (born 1948, in Kolkata, India) is an Indian historian and leading scholar of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies. He is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in history at the University of Chicago, ...

. As a doctoral student he taught

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

at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

. 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 university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora, Victoria, Bundoora. The university was established in 1 ...

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

academic tenure Tenure is a type of academic appointment that protects its holder from being fired or laid off except for Just cause (employment law), cause, or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency or program discontinuation. Academic ten ...

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, 64 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 ...

Wurundjeri The Wurundjeri people are an Aboriginal peoples, Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language, Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the traditional owners of the Yarra River Valley, covering much of the present location of ...

country. At his memorial service, Wurundjeri Elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin described Wolfe as a cherished friend of the Wurundjeri.

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) Academic articles * "Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race" in ''The American Historical Review 106'', no. 3 (2001): 866–905. * "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native" in ''Journal of Genocide Research'', no. 8 (2006): 387–409.

References

External links

{{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 Academic staff of La Trobe University Academic staff of the Victoria University, Melbourne Australian indigenous rights activists Australian people of German-Jewish descent Australian people of Irish descent Scholars of settler colonialism