Deakin University’s Contemporary Histories Research Group would like to warmly welcome their newest member, Dr Alexandra Roginski.

Dr Roginski is a research fellow with the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. Her work spans the history of science, anthropology and heritage studies, and she completed her PhD through the ANU in 2018 with a thesis examining the history of popular phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Alex is the author of The Hanged Man and the Body Thief: Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery (Monash University Publishing, 2015), a book examining the lives of a young Aboriginal man whose remains ended up as part of the collection of Museum Victoria and the Scottish phrenologist who collected him. She has also contributed more broadly to the area of repatriation studies.

Alex currently works on a collaborative project examining the lived experience of patients with Machado Joseph Disease – a rare and devastating genetic condition – in northern Australia.

With a former career in journalism, publishing and communications, Alex is passionate about public scholarship, and has contributed to publications including The Age and the Australian Book Review and appeared on ABC radio.