Hilary Carey is Professor of Imperial and Religious History and joined the history department in 2014. She taught previous at the University of Newcastle NSW, and University College Dublin, where she was Keith Cameron Professor of Australian History. She is a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Arts and Humanities.

She has degrees in history from the University of Sydney and a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she trained initially as a medievalist. Her interests continue to range widely around the role of religion in the British settler empire, including Australia, convicts and convict transportation, missionary linguistics, missions to indigenous people, and the history of missions and religious orders.

Her most recent book, Empire of Hell (CUP, 2019), winner of the Kay Daniels prize, provides a religious history of the campaign to end the transporation of British and Irish convicts.  

Her current funded projects include a history of missions to British seafarers and lascars in British ports, and the history of the 'global bible', a study of missionary linguistics and indigenous translators. She is also writing a history of the 'condemned sermon' at Newgate.