Dr. Lynne Swarts is a Research Affiliate in the History Department at the University of Sydney, and a sessional academic in the Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish studies Department at the University of Sydney. She is also a Research Associate at the University of Technology, Sydney in the School of International Studies and Education. She has taught in the Departments of History, and Art History at the University of Sydney and in the School of Education at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Lynne is a skilled educator and cultural historian with more than 25 years of teaching experience. Her research interests are broad and interdisciplinary and cover gender, the visual arts, European history and Nationalisms, Orientalism, the history of genocides, discrimination, antisemitism and contemporary politics.
Her first book, titled Gender, Orientalism and the Jewish Nation: women in the Work of Ephraim Moses Lilien at the German Fin de Siècle was published by Bloomsbury Academic Press in January 2020. This book encompasses her passion for intellectual intersections: modern European Jewish history, gender studies and visual culture.
Lynne was a Sir Zelman Cowen University Fellow at the Hebrew University in November 2017 and has written for a variety of journals including The Conversation, Tablet, the feminist journal Nashim, the Oxford Journal Studies in Contemporary Jewry, SHOFAR: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies (due out in December) and the Australian Social Educator’s Journal (due out in July).
She now works mainly in the tertiary sector, but also has a wealth of experience in museum education and curatorial collection and exhibition management, and began her career as a high school art teacher.
She has had a number of grants and awards, including the prestigious Australian Academy of the Humanities Award for Publication Assistance, the Sir Zelman Cowen University Fund Exchange Fellowship at the Hebrew University, the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney University of Sydney, the PRSS Research Award from the Center for Jewish History, New York, USA and a number of grants awarded during her PhD candidature.
Lynne has new research on Antisemitism and Contemporary Politics, as well as on Australian Women activists in the pipeline!