Professor Mark Brett teaches Hebrew Bible and ethics at Whitley College. He was raised in Papua New Guinea, which has yielded a lifelong interest in the cultural contexts of education and biblical studies.

Mark holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland, a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton (USA), and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Sheffield (UK). His PhD on hermeneutical philosophy was published as Biblical Criticism in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press, 1991), and his subsequent research has focused on ethnicity and postcolonial studies. His work is concerned with the intersection between religion and politics in contemporary Australia and the South Pacific.

Alongside his academic career, from 2005-2008 Mark also worked as a Policy Officer for Native Title Services Victoria, during which time he assisted with the development of new frameworks for the negotiation of native title claims within the state of Victoria. He was a member of the Secretariat for the 2008 negotiations between the Victorian Traditional Owner Land Justice Group and the Victorian State Government. The policy outcomes of these negotiations subsequently formed the basis of the Victorian Traditional Owner Settlement Act (2010).

Mark has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including five years (1992–1996) as an executive editor of the interdisciplinary journal Biblical Interpretation. In 2019 he became the first non-North-American to be appointed as General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature. His most recent books are Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Indigenous Rights and the Legacies of the Bible: From Moses to Mabo (Oxford University Press, 2024).

University Appointments

Professor of Hebrew Bible (Whitley College)

External Affiliations

• Australian Academy of the Humanities (Fellow)
• Journal of Biblical Literature (General Editor)