Profile: Professor Heather Goodall was Professor Emerita of History in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS and was formerly co-editor of the journal Conservation and Society. Heather specialised in Australian Indigenous history, environmental history, and intercolonial studies, particularly the links between Australia, South Asia, and the eastern Indian Ocean. Her research drew on oral history and archival methods to investigate relationships between people and their environments. Her work included partnerships with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage to research the role of cultural diversity in shaping interactions with rivers and public space in urban areas, and with the Murray–Darling Basin Authority to research local fishing people’s knowledge of changes in rivers and riverine species in inland south-eastern Australia. Her ARC-funded research projects included explorations of relations between India, Indonesia, and Australia (resulting in Beyond Borders, 2018) and between South Asian and Australian women’s movements during the twentieth century (Countering the Cold War, forthcoming). Her most recent book, Georges River Blues: Swamps, Mangroves and Resident Action, 1945–1980, returned to the history of environmental activism on Sydney’s urban rivers.

She passed away peacefully on 29 January 2026 at the age of 75.

Recent publications

• Goodall, H (2021, October) Georges River Blues: Swamps, Mangroves and Resident Action, 1945-1980, ANU Press (Open access online) 
• Goodall, H (2018) Beyond Borders: Indians, Australians and the Indonesian Revolution, 1939-1950 (Amsterdam University Press)
• Goodall, H with Ravinder Frost, M. 2017: “The transnational mission of an Indian war correspondent: P. R. S. Mani in Southeast Asia, 1944 – 1946” in Modern Asian Studies, 51(6), pp1936-1968, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X16001062
• Cook, K, Goodall, H (2013) Making Change Happen: Black & White activists talk to Kevin Cook about Aboriginal, Union & Liberation politics, (Aboriginal History & ANU. ePress, open access online)
• Goodall, H (2013), ‘Geographies of Memory: environmental history and spatial power’. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, Occasional Papers Series. http://www.nehrumemorial.org/history-society-series.php
• Frawley, J, Goodall, H (2013) ‘Transforming Saltbush: science, mobility and metaphor in the remaking of Intercolonial worlds’. Conservation and Society, 11(2):
• Byrne, D, Goodall, H, Cadzow, A (2013), Place-Making in national parks: Ways that Australians of Arabic and Vietnamese background perceive and use the parklands along the Georges River. NSW, NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, online. http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/nswcultureheritage/PlaceMakingGeorgesRiver.htm
• Goodall, H, Cadzow, A (2009) Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney’s Georges River. UNSW Press.
• Goodall, H (2008) ‘Digging Deeper: ground tanks and the elusive Indian Archipelago’. In Beyond the Black Stump: rethinking rural histories in Australia, Alan Mayne (eds.). Adelaide: Wakefield Press.
• Goodall, H (2008) ‘Port Politics: Indian Seamen, Australian unionists and Indonesian Independence, 1945-1947’. Labour History, 94:
• Goodall, H (2008), ‘Riding the Tide: Indigenous knowledge, history and water in a changing Australia’. Environment and History, 14: 355-84.