Christine Helliwell

Christine Helliwell is an anthropologist, author and academic, an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. She has been carrying out research on Borneo’s indigenous Dayak peoples – including living with them in their communities for months at a time – for almost forty years, and has written widely on Dayak social and cultural life. Her book Semut, which details the crucial Dayak contribution to a secret Australian operation in WWII Borneo, took her almost four years to write. It won the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Australian History Prize 2022 and the Les Carlyon Literary Prize 2022, was First Runner-up for the Templer Medal Book Prize (UK) 2022, and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize 2022, the Reid Prize 2022 and the ACT Notable Book Awards 2022.