Description: A study of displaced peoples prosecuted for vagrancy in the colonies of Australia and New Zealand which investigates the transcolonial problem of mobility.
Brief description: Catharine Coleborne is Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research interests include historical understandings of mobility, mental illness, institutions, medicine, law and health in colonial Australia and New Zealand.
Review Quotes:
"Catharine Coleborne's excellent new book Vagrant Lives in Colonial Australasia: Regulating Mobility, 1840-1910 will appeal to a wide readership; her writing segues between academic theory and personal narratives seamlessly." --Journal of Australian, Canadian, and Aotearoa New Zealand Studies
"This book offers a model of interdisciplinary inquiry." --History Australia "This is an engagingly written book, which is thoughtful in its reflections and insightful in its conclusions." --Australian Historical Studies "A deeply researched, commanding account of an important but neglected area of history. Coleborne applies her magisterial expertise in law, society and mental health to analyse the colonial dispossessed and disenfranchised. Sensitive storytelling places humanity at the forefront. An essential contribution to the study of mobility in precarious times." --Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury, New Zealand