Jolly, Margaret

Margaret Anne Jolly AM FASSA, an Emeritus Professor in the College of Asia and The Pacific at the Australian National University (ANU), was born in Sydney on 12 April 1949. She is an historical anthropologist recognised as a world expert on gender in Oceania and has written extensively on gender in the Pacific, exploratory voyages and travel writing, missions and contemporary Christianity, maternity and sexuality, cinema and art.
Jolly worked as a Tutor and Senior Tutor in Anthropology at Macquarie University, while completing her doctoral studies. After completing her PhD, she was appointed Lecturer at Macquarie University (1980-1986). In 1983 she took up an appointment as Visiting Fellow on a Project on Gender Relations in the South West Pacific, Anthropology, in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University (ANU). Jolly was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1987. She was seconded to the Anthropology, Comparative Austronesian Project, Research School of Pacific Studies, at the ANU as a Visiting Fellow (1989-1991) and then returned to Macquarie University for a year, before taking up another secondment at the ANU where she was appointed a Visiting Fellow and Convenor, Gender Relations Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (1992-1995). She was subsequently appointed to a permanent position as a Senior Fellow and Head, Gender Relations Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU (1995-2009). In 1999 Jolly was promoted to Professor in Gender and Cultural Studies/Pacific Studies, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU. She was awarded an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship for her project Engendering persons, transforming things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in Oceania (2010-2015) in 2009.
In addition to her roles at the Australian National University and Macquarie University, Jolly has held a number of prestigious academic roles including Head of the Gender Relations Centre (1992-2009); Burns Distinguished Visiting Chair, History, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (1998); Visiting Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz (2002); Visiting Professor, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France (2009).
Jolly is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and in 2020 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to education, particularly to gender and Pacific studies".