Dorothy Shineberg

Shineberg was born in Hampton, Victoria in February 1927. After her father's death in 1936 she and her four sisters were brought up by their mother. She won a scholarship to attend the selective Mac.Robertson Girls' High School and later another scholarship for University of Melbourne, from which she graduated in 1946 with a BA (Hons).[1] She also had an MA from Smith College.[2] She completed her PhD (1961–1965) at the same university, with a thesis titled "The sandalwood trade in the south-west Pacific, 1830–1865, with special reference to the problems and effects of early contact between Europeans and Melanesians".[3]

Following graduation, Shineberg tutored at the University of Melbourne in 1947. She moved to Sydney to take a position as tutor in colonial history with the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA) for three years.[1] Her colleagues included anthropologists Camilla Wedgwood and Ian Hogbin, lawyers John Kerr and Hal Wootten and poet James McAuley.[2]

In 1950 she was the first Australian woman to win a Fulbright Travelling Scholarship which took her to Smith College in Massachusetts for two years where she completed a Master of Arts.[2] Her work was influenced by Italian historian and anti-Fascist Max Salvadori.[1]

On her return, she taught the first Pacific history courses ever run by any university in Australia to students at the University of Melbourne.[4] While completing her PhD thesis, Shineberg spent 1964 at the Australian National University (ANU) as research fellow in the Department of Pacific History, Research School of Pacific Studies.[4]

After a career spent in both research and teaching at ANU,[2] Shineberg retired from her position of Reader in 1988, but returned as visiting fellow.[4]

She served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Pacific History from 1966 to 1997, including as co-editor from 1987 to 1990. A member of the Pacific History Association, she was granted life membership in 1998.[2]

She contributed three biographies for the Australian Dictionary of Biography – Ranulph Dacre,[5] Richard Jones[6] and Robert Towns.[7] Her research papers are held in the ANU Archives.[4]

• Shineberg, Dorothy (1967), They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific 1830–1865, Melbourne University Press
• Shineberg, Dorothy (1973), Ils étaient venus chercher du santal: étude sur le trafic du bois de santal en Nouvelle-Calédonie et aux Nouvelles-Hébrides de 1830 à 1865, Surleau, André (translator) (3e éd ed.), Nouvelle-Calédonie Société d'études historiques de la Nouvelle-Calédonie
• Shineberg, Dorothy (31 May 1999), The people trade: Pacific Island laborers and New Caledonia, 1865–1930, Center for Pacific Islands Studies, School of Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific Studies, University of Hawai'i : University of Hawai'i Press (published 1999), ISBN 978-0-8248-6491-0

Shineberg married Barry Shineberg, with whom she had a son and a daughter, Michael and Susan, in 1953.[2]

She was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 and died on 19 August 2004.[2] She was survived by her husband and her children.[8] Bronwen Douglas concluded her obituary in the Journal of Pacific History, writing "Pacific history has lost one of its most distinguished founders".[2]