Dr Jacqui Durrant is an historian, author and public speaker. Jacqui holds a PhD in Australian History from La Trobe University and an BAppSc(Hons) in cultural resource management from Charles Sturt University. She has lived on Waywurru and Taungurung Country for more than 25 years and is an authority on the Aboriginal and colonial settler history of north-east Victoria, often referred to as ‘Kelly Country’.

Jacqui specialises in microhistories: highly detailed histories of specific places told within a narrow time frame, especially in times great cultural upheaval. She loves presenting unexpected and never-before-told stories, uncovering new historical evidence and making novel historical interpretations.

Jacqui has worked as a consulting historian and ethnohistorian on over 200 cultural heritage management projects across Victorian and New South Wales. She has also worked on cultural heritage studies for the Rural City of Benalla, Rural City of Wangaratta, and the Indigo Shire.

She undertook the historical research for the nomination of the Beechworth Heritage Precinct to the Register of the National Estate, which was listed 16 August 2024. This has facilitated Beechworth’s inclusion in the Central Goldfields of Victoria UNESCO World Heritage bid.

In 2022-2023 she was engaged as one of two nominated experts to produce the five volume report Ngurai-ilam, Waywurru and Dhudhuroa: Their socio-political identity and interrelationships, country and ancestors, to assist the Supreme Court of Victoria and the Federal Court of Australia.

Her short book Fire on the Plateau – a history of fire and its management in Stanley, was short-listed for the Victorian Community History Awards in 2020. She has published a number of refereed journal articles and book chapters, including ‘Mogullumbidj: First People of Mount Buffalo’, Victorian Historical Journal, (91[1], 2020), short-listed for best journal article in the Victorian Community History Awards in 2020.

Between 2015-2021 she was regularly publishing essays on her history blog Life on Spring Creek, which has now been taken off-line for conversion to more permanent forms of publication.

She has previously also worked as an arts journalist, being highly commended for her work in the 2009 Melbourne Press Club and Trawalla Foundation Arts Journalism Scholarship awards, and being awarded a Janet Holmes A‘court Fellowship at Manning Clark House in 2011.

In 2025 she filmed as a guest historian on the SBS series Who do you think you are? which airs in June 2026.

Jacqui Durrant lives in Benalla, Victoria. She is a member of the Professional Historians Association of Australia.