Tony Ballantyne is Distinguished Chair Poutoko Taiea in History at the University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. Recognised as a leading historian of the modern British Empire, he has also written extensively on colonial New Zealand. His research has produced two foundational ideas: the uneven ‘webs’ of exchange and connection that gave empire its shape, and the cultural ‘entanglements’ that empire building left in its wake. His influential works include Webs of Empire (BWB, 2012) and Entanglements of Empire (AUP, 2014).
Born and raised in Dunedin, Professor Ballantyne completed his first degree at Otago and his PhD at the University of Cambridge, and held faculty positions in Ireland and the United States before returning to New Zealand. His research and publications have been recognised with numerous awards, including the Humanities Aronui Medal from the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2016.
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).