Dr Billy Griffiths, Senior DECRA Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI), is a historian whose work invites Australians to reimagine their relationship with the sea, its stories and its deep past. His current project, Shadow Continent: Submerged Histories from Sahul, explores the cultural and environmental histories of Australia’s drowned coastlines – landscapes that were once inhabited and are now hidden beneath the sea.
This research delves into the ancient continent of Sahul, which once connected Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. By collaborating with archaeologists, geologists and Indigenous communities, Dr Griffiths is helping to reconstruct these submerged worlds and uncover the human histories they contain. His work challenges dominant narratives and expands our understanding of migration, climate change and cultural resilience across tens of thousands of years.
Dr Griffiths is the award-winning author of Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia, a landmark book that has reshaped public and scholarly conversations about archaeology and heritage. The book explores how archaeologists have worked to uncover Australia’s ancient past and the political and cultural debates that have shaped this journey. It has been widely praised for its lyrical prose, intellectual depth and cultural sensitivity and has received an extraordinary array of accolades. These include the 2018 John Mulvaney Book Award, the 2019 Ernest Scott Prize, the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction and Book of the Year at the 2019 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the 2020 Felicia A. Holton Book Award and the 2020 Max Crawford Medal.
In Deep Time Dreaming, Dr Griffiths asks readers to consider what it means to live in a country with a continuous human history stretching back over 65,000 years. He highlights the importance of listening to Indigenous voices and respecting the cultural significance of archaeological sites, arguing that Australia’s deep history is not just a scientific discovery – it’s a cultural inheritance.
As a lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin, Dr Griffiths brings this perspective into the classroom, encouraging students to think critically about history, heritage and the politics of memory. His work continues to inspire a broader public conversation about who we are, where we come from and how we care for the stories embedded in the land.
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