2008: PhD University of Chicago 2003: MA University of Auckland 2000: BA (Hons) Victoria University of Wellington
Research interests
Miranda is a historian of colonialism and decolonization, focusing on issues of settler identity, race, indigeneity, citizenship, and the politics of writing history. Her research and teaching focuses on Anglophone settler societies of the South Pacific and North America.
Her first book, The Land is Our History: Indigeneity, Law and the Settler State (Oxford University Press, 2016) examined the wide-ranging effects of legal claims of Indigenous peoples in the settler states of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada in the late twentieth century. It won the W. K. Hancock Prize in 2018 from the Australian Historical Association.
She is currently writing a book on the mytho-history of the frontier in the Anglophone settler world, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. She is also working on another book on the politics of history-making in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand.
She has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Sydney. With Associate Professor Frances Steel, she is co-director of the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture.
Areas of research supervision
Miranda welcomes students in Pacific, Australian, New Zealand and North American history, with a focus on race, indigeneity, and settler identity in contexts of colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonialism, as well as in intersecting areas of environmental, political and constitutional histories. She is particularly interested in working with students interested in questions of historical practice and theory.
Current supervisions:
Steven O'Connor, PhD current
Georgina White, PhD current (associate supervisor)
Miranda is section editor Australasia and Pacific for History Compass and she sits on the editorial board of the New Zealand Journal of History.
Publications
Johnson, M., & Yannakakis, Y. (2023). Introduction. Ethnohistory, 70(2), 129-134. doi: 10.1215/00141801-10266785
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2023). Biculturalism and historiography in the era of neoliberalism: A view from Aotearoa New Zealand. Ethnohistory, 70(2), 167-185. doi: 10.1215/00141801-10266839
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M., & Storr, C. (2022). Australia as empire. In P. Cane, L. Ford & M. McMillan (Eds.), The Cambridge legal history of Australia. (pp. 258-280). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108633949.011
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2022). [Review of the book Empire and the making of native title: Sovereignty, property and indigenous people]. Australian Historical Studies, 53(1), 171-172. doi: 10.1080/1031461X.2022.2018963
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2021). Indigeneity: Making and contesting the concept. In M. Valverede, K. Clarke, E. Darian-Smith & P. Kotiswaran (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of law and society. (pp. 166-169). Abingdon, YK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429293306
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2021). Indigenizing self-determination at the United Nations: Reparative progress in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international, 23(1), 206-228. doi: 10.1163/15718050-12340164
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2021). [Review of the book Home rule: National sovereignty and the separation of natives and migrants]. American Historical Review, 126(3), 1236-1237. doi: 10.1093/ahr/rhab392
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2020). Connecting indigenous rights to human rights in the anglo settler states: Another 1970s story. In A. D. Moses, M. Duranti & R. Burke (Eds.), Decolonization, self-determination, and the rise of global human rights politics. (pp. 109-131). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108783170.006
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2020). Toward a genealogy of the researcher as subject in post/decolonial Pacific histories. History & Theory, 59(3), 421-429. doi: 10.1111/hith.12170
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2020). [Review of the book Found in translation: Many meanings on a North Australian mission]. History of Education Review, 49(2), 272-274. doi: 10.1108/HER-10-2020-080
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2020). Shaunnagh Dorsett on Māori and colonial courts [Review of the book Juridical Encounters: Māori and the colonial courts, 1840–1852]. History Australia, 17(4), 766-767. doi: 10.1080/14490854.2020.1838933
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2019). Between critique and creativity: Some other politics of writing history in Aotearoa New Zealand. In S. Dube, S. Seth & A. Skaria (Eds.), Dipesh Chakrabarty and the Global South: Subaltern studies, postcolonial perspectives, and the Anthropocene. (pp. 19-28). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429199745
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2019). The case of the million-dollar duck: A hunter, his treaty, and the bending of the settler contract. American Historical Review, 124(1), 56-86. doi: 10.1093/ahr/rhy576
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2019). [Review of the book Dynamics of difference in Australia: Indigenous past and present in a settler country]. Australian Journal of Politics & History, 65(3), 482-483. doi: 10.1111/ajph.12593
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2019). Knotted histories. Journal of New Zealand Studies, NS29, 89-96. doi: 10.26686/jnzs.v0iNS29.6264
Journal - Research Other
Anderson, W., Johnson, M., & Brookes, B. (Eds.). (2018). Pacific futures: Past and present. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 314p.
Edited Book - Research
Aldrich, R., & Johnson, M. (2018). History and colonisation. In G. Baldacchino (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of island studies: A world of islands. (pp. 153-172). London, UK: Routledge.
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2018). Introduction: The declension of history. In W. Anderson, M. Johnson & B. Brookes (Eds.), Pacific futures: Past and present. (pp. 1-14). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2018). Sacred claims and the politics of indigeneity in Australia. Journal of Religious & Political Practice, 4(1), 78-92. doi: 10.1080/20566093.2017.1393174
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M., & Rowse, T. (2018). Indigenous and other Australians since 1901: A conversation between Professor Tim Rowse and Dr Miranda Johnson. Aboriginal History, 42, 125-140. doi: 10.22459/AH.42.2018.06
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2018). [Review of the book Aboriginal rights claims and the making and remaking of history]. University of Toronto Quarterly, 87(3), 283-284. doi: 10.3138/utq.87.3.7
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2017). Australia's black history: The politics of comparison and transnational indigenous activism in commonwealth settler states. In A. Clark, A. Rees & A. Simmonds (Eds.), Transnationalism, nationalism and Australian history. (pp. 35-47). Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-5017-6_3
Chapter in Book - Research
Antonellos, S., Rantall, J., Haskins, V., Haake, C., Healy, S., Johnson, M., & Stevens, L. (2017). Indigenous history [A conversation facilitated by Steven Antonellos and Jayne Rantall]. Australasian Journal of American Studies, 36(2), 115-128.
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2017). [Review of the book Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous globalisation and the ends of empire]. American Historical Review, 122(5), 1599-1600. doi: 10.1093/ahr/122.5.1599
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2017). [Review of the book Entanglements of empire: Missionaries, Māori, and the question of the body]. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 26(1), 142-144. [Book Review].
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2017). [Review of the books Just relations: The story of Mary Bennett’s crusade for Aboriginal rights; Different white people: Radical activism for Aboriginal rights 1946–1972; Trapped in the gap: Doing good in indigenous Australia]. Australian Historical Studies, 48(2), 293-295. doi: 10.1080/1031461X.2017.1302288
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2016). The land is our history: Indigeneity, law, and the settler state. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 248p.
Authored Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2016). Chiefly women: Queen Victoria, Meri Mangakahia, and the Māori parliament. In S. Carter & M. Nugent (Eds.), Mistress of everything: Queen Victoria in indigenous worlds. (pp. 228-245). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2016). Making a treaty archive: Indigenous rights on the Canadian development frontier. In S. Motha & H. van Rijswijk (Eds.), Law, memory, violence: Uncovering the counter-archive. (pp. 195-214). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315737157
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2015). Indigeneity and the archive: Mediating the public, the private and the communal. In P. Ashton, C. Gibson & R. Gibson (Eds.), By-roads and hidden treasures: Mapping cultural assets in regional Australia. (pp. 87-98). Perth, Australia: UWA Publishing.
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2014). Writing indigenous histories now. Australian Historical Studies, 45(3), 317-330. doi: 10.1080/1031461X.2014.946525
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2011). Burdens of belonging: Indigeneity and the re-founding of Aotearoa New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of History, 45(1), 102-112.
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2011). Reconciliation, indigeneity, and postcolonial nationhood in settler states. Postcolonial Studies, 14(2), 187-201. doi: 10.1080/13688790.2011.563457
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2011). [Review of the book Settler sovereignty: Jurisdiction and indigenous people in America and Australia, 1788–1836]. Comparative Studies in Society & History, 53(1), 219-220. doi: 10.1017/S0010417510000691
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2010). [Review of the book Mata Toa: The life and times of Ranginui Walker]. Journal of Pacific History, 45(1), 174-175. doi: 10.1080/00223344.2010.484185
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2009). The Gove Land Rights Case and the problem of history in a decolonising Australia. In B. Attwood & T. Griffiths (Eds.), Frontier, race, nation: Henry Reynolds and Australian history. (pp. 305-329). Melbourne, Australia: Australian Scholarly.
Chapter in Book - Research
Johnson, M. (2009). [Review of the book Rights and redemption: History, law and indigenous people]. History Australia, 6(1), 25.1-25.3. doi: 10.2104/ha090025
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2008). Making history public: Indigenous claims to settler states. Public Culture, 20(1), 97-117. doi: 10.1215/08992363-2007-018
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2006). [Review of the book One and a half Pacific Islands/Teuana ao Teiterana n aba n Te Betebeke: Stories the Banaban people tell of themselves/I-Banaba aika a Karakon oin Rongorongoia]. Journal of Pacific History, 41(3), 340-341. doi: 10.1080/00223340600984851
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2006). [Review of the book The Waitangi Tribunal and New Zealand history]. Law, Culture & the Humanities, 2(1), 136-138. doi: 10.1191/1743872106lw040xx
Journal - Research Other
Johnson, M. (2005). 'The land of the wrong white crowd': Anti-racist organizations and Pakeha identity politics in the 1970s. New Zealand Journal of History, 39(2), 137-157.
Journal - Research Article
Johnson, M. (2005). Honest acts and dangerous supplements: Indigenous oral history and historical practice in settler societies. Postcolonial Studies, 8(3), 261-276. doi: 10.1080/13688790500231046
Journal - Research Article