Lennox, Dr Rowena

Rowena Lennox is the author of Dingo Bold: the life and death of K’gari dingoes (Sydney University Press, 2021) and Fighting Spirit of East Timor: the life of Martinho da Costa Lopes (Pluto/Zed, 2000). Her essays, fiction, memoir, poems and short articles have appeared in The Big Issue, Griffith Review, Hecate, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, New Statesman, Seizure, Social Alternatives, Southerly, and the Sydney Morning Herald. As well as mentoring and teaching creative writing, Rowena has worked as a book editor for many years.

Her recent research explores dingoes as subjects of colonisation and agents of decolonisation. Two articles co-authored with Fiona Probyn-Rapsey examine a 2016 conservation project in which dingoes who had been implanted with delayed-release poison capsules were used as biocontrol tools to eradicate goats on a Great Barrier Reef Island. The articles analyse the media management, public reaction, political fall-out and animal ethics implications of the Pelorus Island goat eradication project, as well as contextualising the scheme within the cultural–political history of carceral colonialism in Australia, the cultural production of ‘pests’, and the special role that islands play in conservation.