Ross Jones is the Senior Research Fellow in the Indigenous History of the University of Melbourne Project. After studying in the History School and Education Faculty at the University of Melbourne, he taught for two decades in secondary schools in the state and private sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom. In the 1990s he completed a Master of Educational Studies and a PhD at Monash University on the eugenics movement in Victoria. After teaching the histories of biology and medicine in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne, he took up an ARC postdoctoral position in the History School at the University of Sydney which culminated in, amongst other publications, Anatomists of Empire: Race, Evolution and the Discovery of Human Biology in the British World (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2020). In 2016-17 he was awarded the Redmond Barry Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria to write on the history of tuberculosis. He has held honorary positions at the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney and La Trobe University in Medicine and Law Faculties and History departments.

Ross’s research interests and publications range across medical and educational eugenics in Australia and the US and UK; the history of human anatomy, anthropology and race theory; the development of public education; medical biography and public health policies. He has given numerous keynote and invited presentations at local and international conferences. Ross has also been regularly involved in all forms of media as a public intellectual, on screen and as a researcher, including for Who Do You Think You Are? on SBS. He has over 57,000 readers for articles in The Conversation and has been invited to talk for local and national radio on many occasions. He has also written and been a participant in documentaries for ABC Radio National.