Maria John

• Mellon Interdisciplinary Fellows Program
• Department of History

Maria John was born and raised in Hong Kong, but also lived in Western Australia as a child. She currently lives in New York City, where she is a PhD Candidate in the History Department at Columbia University. Her dissertation is a comparative social and political history, focusing on the U.S. and Australia in the period following the Second World War. In particular, she writes about the history of health activism and advocacy among the urban indigenous communities of Seattle and Sydney between 1950-1980, as a means of understanding how the political project of indigenous sovereignty has been reformulated in the wake of massive post-war rural to urban migration. Before moving to New York, Maria lived in Melbourne, Australia, where she completed a BA (Honours), and a MA in History, at Monash University.