Tony Ballantyne, FRSNZ, is a Poutoko Taiea Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Otago.
Tony is recognised as a leading historian of the modern British Empire and has also written extensively on colonial New Zealand. He is particularly known for developing an approach to the history of empire and colonialism that focuses on the uneven 'webs' of exchange and connection that gave the empire shape and for highlighting the cultural ‘entanglements’ that resulted from empire-building. He has worked extensively on the modern British empire, particularly the development of colonial knowledge, the production of cultural difference, missionaries and humanitarianism, and cultures of mobility.
Born and raised in Dunedin, Tony completed his first degree at Otago and his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He held faculty positions in Ireland and the United States before returning to New Zealand. After serving as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Humanities and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, External Engagement, he is very happy to have returned to the classroom and research at Otago.
Publications include
Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Māori and the Question of the Body (Duke University Press, 2014).
[with Antoinette Burton], Empires and the Reach of the Global (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand’s Colonial Past (Bridget Williams Books, 2012).
Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (Duke University Press, 2006).
Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2001).