Historian and filmmaker Santilla Chingaipe joins award-winning journalist Nadine White to discuss the Black lives erased from Australia’s national story.
At least 15 convicts aboard Australia’s First Fleet were of African descent. By 1840, almost 500 Black convicts had been transported to Australia. Their portraits can be found in galleries and traces of their lives survive in archives, yet their stories have largely disappeared from the country’s history.
In this revealing OzLit Festival conversation, Santilla Chingaipe will uncover the stories of the men, women and children excluded from Australia’s colonial narrative and explore the connections between Britain, Africa, the Caribbean and Australia.
Drawing on years of archival research, her book Black Convicts: How Slavery Shaped Australia restores individuality to people too often reduced to historical footnotes or forgotten altogether.
Chingaipe examines how race, slavery, empire, punishment and migration shaped Australia from its beginnings—and how recovering these lives changes our understanding of the country today.
Santilla Chingaipe is a Zambian-born Australian filmmaker, historian and author. Black Convicts was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and longlisted for the Cundill History Prize.
A former SBS World News journalist, she is also the creator of the award-winning documentary Our African Roots. In 2019, the United Nations recognised her as one of the world’s most influential people of African descent under the age of 40.
The event forms part of OzLit Festival 2026, a celebration of contemporary Australian writing and ideas presented at Foyles in partnership with the Foundation for Australian and New Zealand Arts and the Australian High Commission.
Individual event tickets and Festival Day Tickets are available.
Accessibility: The Level 6 Auditorium is fully accessible from the ground floor using the lifts.
For enquiries, contact amira@jacarandabooks.co.uk.
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