Margaret Chilla Bulbeck

Chilla was Chair in Women's Studies at the University of Adelaide from 1997 to 2008, where she taught and published at the intersections of gender and class, ethnicity/nation and generation.  She has published extensively on issues of gender and difference, including Re-Orienting Western Feminisms: Women's Diversity in a Post-Colonial World (1998), and Living Feminism: The Impact of the Women's Movement on Three Generations of Australian Women (1997), as well as contributing to associated bodies of knowledge –for example, Facing the Wild: Ecotourism, Conservation and Animal Encounters (2005).  Chilla retired in 2008 and became Emerita Professor in the same year. Since retiring, she has become a full-time activist, primarily for the Greens (WA).

Chilla considers that she has experienced an exceptionally fortunate life for a female.  She explains this by noting that she entered higher education when it was becoming acceptable for girls, gained employment when the economy was still booming, and was able to become part of the exhilaration of interdisciplinary and then women’s studies teaching as a result of the social movement ferment of the 1970s.