Anne O’Brien is Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Languages at UNSW.  Her interests in social and cultural history focus on Australia in its transnational context.

She is the author of three monographs, Poverty’s Prison: The Poor in NSW, 1880-1918, God’s Willing Workers: Women and Religion in Australia and Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism. She has written numerous articles and book chapters in the fields of women’s and gender history, religious history and welfare history.

Her current major research project is 'Homelessness and Homeless People: an Australian History', a project undertaken with Dr Heather Holst, Deputy CEO of Launch Housing, for which they were granted an ARC Discovery Project Grant 2018-20. She is currently supervising/co-supervising 3 PhD students and has supervised/co-supervised 15 completed PhDs.