Patricia O’Brien

Patricia O’Brien is Associate Professor and Visiting Fellow at the Department of Pacific Affairs, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific. She was the resident Australian and Pacific historian at Georgetown University, Washington, DC from 2000-2013, the Jay I. Kislak Fellow in American Studies at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in 2011 and the J. D. Stout Fellow in New Zealand Studies at Victoria University Wellington in 2012. From 2014-2019 she was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of History, Australian National University, Canberra. In 2020, she returned to Georgetown University to teach on Pacific pasts and presents in the Asian Studies Program. In October 2021, she joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington DC, in the Asia Program and Pacific Partners Initiative as an adjunct fellow.

As well as ongoing historical writing and research, she is a widely published analyst and media commentator on Pacific-centred topics. She is the author of Tautai: Sāmoa, World History and the Life and Ta’isi O. F. Nelson (2017), The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific (2006) and is co-editor of League of Nations: Histories, Legacies and Impact (2018) and numerous other works.