Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is Associate Professor of History and Western Civilisation at Australian Catholic University in North Sydney, which is part of the Ramsay Centre’s Western Civilisation Program. She is currently co-editor of the Journal of Religious History.
Sarah was born in Sydney, Australia to Susan and Terry Irving, a prominent radical historian. History was always part of the conversation in the Irving household. She attained her Bachelor of Arts Degree in History from the University of Sydney with First Class Honours and was awarded the University Medal in 2003.
Sarah was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to the University of Cambridge where she was a member of King’s College. She was awarded her Doctor of Philosophy in History from the University for Cambridge in 2007. She was then elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
In 2008, Sarah was appointed as Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. She was subsequently Senior Lecturer in History and Political Thought at Western Sydney University before joining Australian Catholic University as an Associate Professor.
Her first book, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire (Routledge: 2008; paperback 2016), investigates the way that England’s colonial empire became tied to the Protestant redemptive project of restoring humanity's original dominion over nature. It was awarded The Royal Society of Literature and Jerwood Foundation Award for Non-fiction.
She has published her research extensively in academic journals including: History of European Ideas; The Oxford Journal of Law and Religion; Hopos: Journal of the History and Philosophy of Science; The Journal of Early Modern History; Pacific History; History of the Human Sciences; Atlantic Studies; Missiology: an International Review; Journal of Early Modern Studies; Journal of Religious History; American Theological Inquiry; The Seventeenth Century; Britain and the World; Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Colonial Interactions; Eighteenth Century Studies; Early American Literature; Australian Journal of Politics and History.
Her latest book is Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age
(Zondervan, September 2024)
Sarah and her husband, Johnathan, have three children, Madeleine, Charlotte, and James. Sarah and her family live in the Hawkesbury region outside of Sydney, where her husband practises law at Stonebraker Lawyers, and they are active members of a Sydney Anglican Church.