Associate ProfessorCindy McCreery

BA Yale MPhil DPhil Oxf Grad CertEdStud Sydney

Cindy McCreery is a cultural historian whose current research focuses on monarchy and colonialism in the period c.1860-1920. She is particulalry interested in how royal rulers in southern Africa and the Asia-Pacific sought to protect their realms from western imperialism through close personal connections with British and other European dynasties, and the role of overseas royal tours, gift exchange and personal correspondence in facilitating and consolidating such relationships. Her university teaching as well as research increasingly adopts an 'Object-based learning' (OBL) approach, involving close study of a wide range of objects, monuments and the built environment. Many of her History units are now taught in USYD's Chau Chak Wing Museum and she has also led two OBL-focused History programmes in Mumbai, India. Recent collaborative publications include Crowns and Colonies (2016), Royals on Tour (2018), Monarchies and Decolonisation in Asia (2020) (all published by Manchester University Press), Global Royal Families (2024) (Oxford University Press). Her new monograph Alfred's Empire: imperial identity and Britain's first global royal tour will be published by Manchester University Press in 2026. With Robert Aldrich she is editing the twentieth-century volume of Bloomsbury's Cultural History of Monarchy (2028) and with Hilary Sapire she is editing a special issue of the South African Historical Journal on royal diplomacy and cosmopolitanism in 19 and 20c. Southern Africa (2027).