Norman Etherington was educated at Yale University and came to Australia as a lecturer in history at the University of Adelaide in 1968. He is a past president of the Australian Historical Association and Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Western Australia, and continues to write on British Imperial and African History. His recent publications include Missions and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2007), Mapping Colonial Conquest: Australia and Southern Africa (UWA Publishing, 2007), and articles for the American Historical Review and the Journal of African History.