Email: margaret.sankey@sydney.edu.au
Margaret Sankey is Emeritus Professor of French Studies at the University of Sydney and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She specialises in French cultural history and has published extensively on different aspects of the Baudin expedition to the Southern hemisphere. In 2002, to mark the bicentenary of Baudin’s visit to the British colony of Port Jackson, she organised the Australian Society for French Studies conference, Regards croisés: the French and Terra Australis from the sixteenth century to the present, at the University of Sydney.
She has presented numerous papers in national and international fora on the Baudin expedition: Paris, Le Havre, Mauritius, Brussels, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth. In 2007 she gave the inaugural Frank Horner lecture, Writing and Rewriting the Baudin Scientific Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere (1800-1804), at the FATFA conference in Adelaide and in 2008 she presented a paper at the conference on Lapérouse et les explorateurs français du Pacifique, at the Musée de la Marine in Paris.
Her research on the Baudin expedition is allied to her interest in French notions of the Terres Australes in the seventeenth century and the influence of the Abbé Paulmier’s Mémoires (1663) on early French voyages of exploration to the Southern hemisphere.
In 2008 Professor Sankey was made an Officier in the Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Government.
Publications on the Baudin expedition and early French exploration
Edited Volumes
Mémoires touchant l’établissement d’une mission chrestienne dans le troisième monde. Autrement appelé, La Terre Australe, Meridionale, Antartique, & Inconnuë, édition critique, établie, présentée et annotée par Margaret Sankey, Paris, Ed. Honoré Champion, 2006, 401 p.
With P. Cowley & J. Fornasiero, ‘The Baudin Expedition 1800-1804: Texts, Contexts and Subtexts’, Australian Journal of French Studies, XLI, 2, May-August 2004.
Articles and Chapters
”The Journals of François Péron and the Voyage de découvertes aux Terres australes”, in J. Fornasiero & J. West-Sooby (eds), ‘Roaming freely throughout the universe’: Nicolas Baudin’s Voyage to Australia and the pursuit of science, Mile End, Wakefield Press, 2021, pp. 89-103.
“The French ‘discovery’ of the Pacific: New Worlds in the South”, The Globe: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Map Society, 88, 2020, pp. 27-41.
With J. West-Sooby & J. Fornasiero, “Nicolas Baudin (1754-1803): From Seafarer to Philosophical Traveller”, in I. Barko & E. Berti (eds), French Lives in Australia, North Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2015, pp. 36-56.
“The Abbé Paulmier’s Mémoires and early French voyages in search of Terra australis“, in J. West-Sooby (ed.), Discovery and Empire: the French in the South Seas, Adelaide, University of Adelaide Press, 2013, pp. 41-68.
”The Cartography of the Baudin Expedition: Louis Freycinet’s map of New Holland“, in Rupert Gerritsen & Peter Reynders (eds), The Freycinet Map of 1811: the 200th Anniversary of the Publication of the First Map of Australia, Canberra, Australia on the Map, 2012 pp. 2-19.
“Mapping Terra Australis in the French seventeenth century“, in A. Hiatt, C. McIlroy, A. Scott & C. Wortham (eds), European Perceptions of Terra Australis, London, Ashgate, 2011, pp. 111-133.
“Writing and Rewriting the Baudin Scientific Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, 1800-1804“, in J. Fornasiero & C. Mrowa-Hopkins (eds), Explorations and Encounters in French, Adelaide, University of Adelaide Press, 2010, pp. 103-134.
“Les premiers contacts: les Aborigènes de la Nouvelle-Hollande observés par les officiers et les savants de l’expédition Baudin“, Etudes sur le XVIIIe siècle, 38, 2010, pp. 171-185.
“Writing the Voyage of Scientific Exploration: the Logbooks, Journals and Notes of the Baudin Expedition (1800-1804)“, Intellectual History Review, 20, 3, 2010, pp. 401-413.
“Les journaux de l’expédition scientifique de Nicolas Baudin (1800-1804) et la construction du savoir scientifique“, Lapérouse et les explorateurs français du Pacifique, espaces de découvertes et savoirs scientifiques (1760 –1840),(Refereed proceedings of the colloquium of 17-18 October, 2008), Paris, Musée de la Marine, 2009: http://www.musee-marine.fr/content/actes-de-colloque-laperouse
“The English Translation (1809) of the Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes de François Péron: the Politics of Discovery in early nineteenth-century France and England“, in S.M. Rivière et K.R. Issur (eds), Baudin-Flinders dans l’océan Indien : voyages, découvertes, rencontre, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007, pp. 195-216.
“French Representations of Sydney at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century: the Subversion of Modernism“, Literature & Aesthetics, The Journal of the Sydney Society of Literature & Aesthetics, 15, 2, 2005, pp. 101-108.
With P. Cowley & J. Fornasiero, “The Baudin Expedition in Review: Old Quarrels and New Approaches“, Australian Journal of French Studies, 41, 2, 2004, pp. 4-14.
“The Aborigines of Port Jackson, as Seen by the Baudin Expedition“, Australian Journal of French Studies, 41, 2, 2004, pp. 117-125.
“The Baudin Expedition in Port Jackson, 1802: Cultural Encounters and Enlightenment Politics“, Explorations, 31, 2001, pp. 5-36.
“The French and Terra Australis“, Arts: The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association, 25, 2003, pp. 26-64.
“L’Abbé Paulmier méconnu: le mythe et l’histoire des Terres australes en France au dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles“, Studies in Eighteenth Century French Fiction in Honour of Angus Martin, Australian Journal of French Studies, 38, 1, 2001, pp.
“Est ou Ouest: le mythe des terres australes en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles“, in K. Issur and V. Hookoomsing (eds), L’ocean Indien dans les littératures francophones: pays reels, pays rêvés, pays révélés, Paris et Réduit, Editions Karthala et Presses de l’Université de Maurice, 2001, pp. 13-26.
“Perceptions of the Aborigines Recorded during the Baudin Expedition: the Dynamics of First Encounter“, in Bruce Bennett (ed.), Australia in Between Cultures, Specialist Session Papers from the 1998 Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium, Canberra, Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1999, pp. 55-76.
“Where was Gonneville’s land? Did the French Discover Australia? The Abbé Paulmier’s Mémoires touchant l’établissement d’une mission chrestienne dans le Troisième Monde, autrement appellé la Terre australe, méridionale, Antarctique & inconnuë: the French and the Terres australes“, Parergon, Bulletin of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, New Series, Papers from Columbus 500: retrospect and prospect, 12, 2, 1995, pp.115-126.
“La mission impossible: l’abbé Paulmier et les Terres australes“, in Bruce Merry (ed.), Essays in Honour of Keith Sinclair, Townsville, Capricornia Monographs, James Cook University, 1991, pp. 35-47.
“Anthropology and Myth: the Antipodean Other in F.-A. Péron’s Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes“, in M. Blackman (ed.), Australian Aborigines and the French, UNSW Occasional Monographs, 3, 1990, pp. 137-149.
“The Baudin Expedition: Natural Man and the Imaginary Antipodean“, in D. Garrioch (ed.) Proceedings of George Rudé Seminar VI: Two Hundred Years of the French Revolution, Monash, 1989, pp. 149-160.
“F.-A. Péron et l’écriture de la science”, Cahiers de sociologie économique et culturelle, 9, 1988, pp. 37-46. Also published in André Dommergues & Maryvonne Nedeljkovic (eds), Voyages de découvertes et missions scientifiques de 1756 à nos jours, Paris, University Paris X-Nanterre, 1989, pp. 121-133.