Dr Margaret Cook 
Historian & Heritage Consultant 

Dr Margaret Cook is a history lecturer at the University of Sunshine Coast, a Research Fellow at Griffith University in the Australian Rivers Institute and holds Honorary Research Fellow positions at La Trobe University and University of Queensland. She has been a freelance historian for many years, working in the heritage, museum, government and private sectors and publishing on numerous topics. 

She holds a PhD in history from the University of Queensland and her current research interests include natural disasters, rivers, water politics, and environmental history. Her recent books are A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods, an edited collection with Scott McKinnon, Disasters in Australia and New Zealand: Historical Approaches to Understanding Catastrophe and a co-authored book Cities in a Sunburnt Country: Water and the Making of Urban Australia. She was the recipient of the John and Ruth Kerr Medal of Distinction for excellence in historiography, historical research and writing in 2020.