Dr Frances Thiele is a freelance historian currently working in the area of Aboriginal cultural heritage management. In 1995 she was a visiting research scholar at Cambridge University and in 1997 won the EW Benham Prize for a PhD in Early Modern English History from the University of Adelaide. She worked for seven years as Field Historian at the State Library of Victoria developing websites and exhibitions, and collecting material for the Library’s Manuscript, Picture and Map Collections. In 2006 she became an honorary research associate with the History Program at La Trobe University and in 2007 was awarded The La Trobe Society’s inaugural fellowship for a study of Superintendent La Trobe’s management of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate.