Red X iconGreen tick iconYellow tick icon
Skip to main content Skip to side navigation

Miranda Johnson profile photo.Contact details

Room 2S8, Arts 1 (Burns) Building
Tel +64 3 479 5761
Email miranda.johnson@otago.ac.nz

Academic qualifications

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 decolonisation, focusing on issues of settler identity, race, indigeneity, citizenship, and the politics of writing history. Her research 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 entangled crises of nationhood and history-writing in two South Pacific settler states, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The book examines the work of several generations of historians who have wrestled with the matter of contested national identity and historical methods. A second book in progress examines Indigenous politics and imperial frameworks in the context of New Zealand in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

With Associate Professor Paerau Warbrick (Te Tumu) she is collating a collection of Māori petitions to the colonial New Zealand and British imperial governments in the nineteenth century. This is funded by a University of Otago Research Grant.

She has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Sydney, where she maintains a research affiliation. She is currently president of the New Zealand Historical Association.

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 on questions of historical practice and theory.

Current supervisions:

  • May Kotsen, MA
  • Lisa Carlin, PhD (associate supervisor)
  • Georgina White, PhD (associate supervisor)

Teaching

Editorial responsibilities

Miranda is section editor Australasia and Pacific for History Compass. She is on the international editorial board of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

Publications

Johnson, M. (2025). Subjects of difference: Māori petitions and the late-nineteenth century colonial state. Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/03086534.2025.2462629 Journal - Research Article

Johnson, M. (2024). Disavowing history. Environment & Planning A. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/0308518X241285 Journal - Research Other

Johnson, M., Ford, L., Bushra, M. E.-S., Narawa, U., & Schonthal, B. (2024, August). Thinking about categories and diversities of law. Workshop presentation at the Otago Centre for Law and Society Conference: Pluralising Legalities, Dunedin, New Zealand. Conference Contribution - Verbal presentation and other Conference outputs

Johnson, M. (2024). Whither Waitangi? Biculturalism on the rocks in New Zealand. Australian Book Review, June(465). Retrieved from https://www.australianbookreview.com.au Journal - Research Other

Johnson, M. (2024, March). Subalternity, indigeneity, and historical knowledge. Workshop on "Subalterns, Histories, Subjects, Disciplines: Act II". Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi, India. [Invited Presentation]. Other Research Output

Back to top