James Dunk lives and writes in Wangal country in Sydney’s inner west.

He works as a historian at the University of Sydney, where he lectures in Australian history and the history of medicine, and he is a conjoint fellow at the University of Newcastle.

His research has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Rethinking History, History Australia, and Health and History and his literary reviews and essays have appeared in various magazines and journals.

BEDLAM AT BOTANY

His first book, Bedlam at Botany Bay, won the Australian History Prize at the New South Wales Premier’s History Awards 2020 and was also shortlisted for the University of Queensland Non-Fiction Book Award, Ernest Scott Prize and the Kay Daniels Award.

Stories of madness are woven together into a narrative about freedom and possibilities, unravelling and collapse. Bedlam at Botany Bay looks at people who found themselves not only at the edge of the world but at the edge of sanity. It shows their worlds colliding.

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