Rate My Professor Michael McDonnell

Professor Michael McDonnell is Professor of Early American History and Chair of the Discipline of History in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. He earned his BA in History and Philosophy from the University of Ottawa and his DPhil from Balliol College, Oxford. Prior to his current position, which he has held since 2004, McDonnell taught at the University of Wales, Swansea, and served as Junior Dean at Balliol College, Oxford.

McDonnell's research examines the roles of marginalized actors in shaping major historical events, particularly during the Age of Revolutions. His key publications include Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (2015), which received the Robert M. Utley Award and Michigan State History Award; The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (2007), winner of the NSW Premier’s History Prize; Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age (co-edited with Kate Fullagar, 2018); Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation-Making from Independence to the Civil War (co-edited with Clare Corbould, Frances Clarke, and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, 2013); and Rethinking the Age of Revolution (edited, 2017). He has won the Lester Cappon Prize for his article “Class War? Class Struggles During the American Revolution in Virginia” (2006) and served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians from 2008 to 2011. McDonnell has received three ARC Discovery Project Grants and an ARC Linkage Grant. Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2021, his ongoing projects include studies of the American Revolution in Black American life (with Clare Corbould), Revolutionary War memoirs by lower-class veterans, and co-editing a three-volume Cambridge History of the American Revolution (with Marjoleine Kars and Andy Schocket). He leads initiatives to widen participation in higher education, including the History Social Inclusion Program and the capstone unit History Beyond the Classroom, partnering with community organizations on public history projects.