Sally Ninham
Sally Ninham is an independent scholar and author affiliated with La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She has been educated in Australia (at the Australian National University, and La Trobe University), in Germany at the University of Hamburg, and on occasion at the University of California Berkeley. She has featured on the program “New Books in History” with Bob Wintermute and Marshall Poe (New York Broadcasting Network), she is a member of the board of Connor Court Quarterly, and in 1989 and 1990 was a member and World Championship Medalist in the Australian Rowing Team. Today, she is married and raises five children.
Her first book, “A Cohort of Pioneers”, relied upon interviews with prominent Australian intellectuals, researchers, past academics, and professionals to consider the impact of an American postgraduate experience in the 1950’s and early 1960’s on Australia’s growing intellectual, social, and research cultures since WWII.
Her most recent work, “Ten African Cardinals”, tracks conversations with ten of the fourteen African Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, and documents the experience of those interviews for the author. While considering the vast contributions these men have made to their countries and the enormous challenges of their work, Ninham offers a path into an enormously misunderstood continent. She also uses personal experience to consider some of the limitations in Western individualist and feminist thinking that make understanding Africa near impossible.
Her next book “Right Thinking, interviews with Australia’s leading conservatives” is due to be published in 2014.
Sally continues to follow (and recently took part in) workshops completed at the Regional Oral History Office at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also supported the writing of an oral history program for Australian high school students who seek a closer association with their local communities and an understanding of the Australian migrant experience in the city of Melbourne, Australia. Sally is committed to breaking down barriers between people and establishing connection and understanding across difference.
