Dr Jessica O’Leary awarded Australian Academy of the Humanities Travelling Fellowship
Dr Jessica O'Leary
Dr Jessica O’Leary is one of eight outstanding early-career researchers awarded a 2026 Humanities Travelling Fellowship by the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
The Humanities Travelling Fellowship was first awarded in 1985, supporting early-career researchers with up to $4000 to undertake research overseas, including accessing archives and other research materials and connecting with international researchers and networks.
Dr O’Leary is a senior history lecturer in the School of Philosophical, Historical and and Indigenous Studies. She is nationally and internationally recognised as a leading scholar of early modern global women’s and gender history. She has challenged assumptions that global exchange and diplomatic practice were driven primarily by elite male institutions, demonstrating instead how women enabled the circulation of people, knowledge and power across cultural and imperial boundaries.
Dr O’Leary’s project delves into the central but obscure role of Indigenous women in the formation of colonial Brazil. Through this fellowship Dr O’Leary will travel to Italy, with the opportunity to examine 17th Century Jesuit missionary documentations.
This project highlights that colonisation was heavily dependent on Indigenous women’s expertise to shape the foundations of early colonial society.
“I’m thrilled to receive this Fellowship, which will allow me to work in the Jesuit archives in Rome and uncover new evidence of how Indigenous women shaped life in early colonial Brazil,” Dr O’Leary said.
Dr O’Leary is transforming early modern global history by establishing women as central agents in diplomacy, empire and cross-cultural knowledge production.