Ian Tyrrell


Ian Robert Tyrrell is an Australian historian notable for his work on American Exceptionalism and transnational history. Tyrrell was Scientia Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Sydney until his retirement in July 2012 and is now an Emeritus Professor of History at UNSW. He is the author of twelve books, including True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860 –1930 and Historians in Public: The Practice of American History, 1890-1970. His main research areas include American history, environmental history, and historiography. He was among the first historians to popularise the idea of transnational history.
Born in Brisbane, Queensland, Tyrrell completed a BA Honours Degree at the University of Queensland and a PhD at Duke University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar and James B. Duke Fellow. Tyrrell was editor of the from 1991 to 1996, and President of the from 2002 to 2006. Tyrrell is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and was awarded a Commonwealth of Australia Centenary Medal in 2003. He has been a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris; and Joyce Appleby Professor of United States History at the University of California, Los Angeles, Fall 2009. He was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History in the University of Oxford in 2010-11; and was appointed a Professorial Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford University.