Victoria: The Queen (Baird) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971 (?)
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—B.A., Ph.D. University of Sydney
• Currently—lives in Sydney


Julia Baird is an Australian political journalist, television commentator, and author of two nonfiction books: Media Tarts: Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians (2004),  and Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire (2016).

Early life and education
Baird was born in Sydney, the middle child of politician Bruce Baird and his wife Judy. Her older brother, Michael has served as Premier of New South Wales. The family lived in Rye, New York, in the U.S. during the 1970s while her father was Australian Trade Commissioner They returned to Australia in 1980, after which Baird attended Ravenswood School for Girls.

Baird earned her B.A. and, in 2001, her Ph.D in history from the University of Sydney. Her doctoral thesis was on women in politics. In 2005, she was a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University researching the globalization of American opinion in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Career
Baird started her journalistic career with the Sydney Morning Herald in 1998 and, by 2000, was editor of the Opinion pages. She was a campaigner for women in the Sydney diocese of the Anglican church and also worked as a religious commentator for Triple J and as a freelancer for ABC Radio. Her first book, Media Tarts was published in 2004.

In 2006, Baird became deputy editor at Newsweek in New York City, working there until it ceased print publication in 2012. She also wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her topics have included gender and politics, covering for example misogyny in Australian politics and transgender soldiers in the American military. She has also written about religious topics, and more recently about Donald Trump's political strategy.

She returned to Australia and currently hosts the The Drum, a current affairs television show. In 2016 she published her biography of Queen Victoria.

Personal life
Baird has two children. In 2015, she revealed in a New York Times column that she was recovering from surgery for ovarian cancer. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/11/2016.)

Visit the author's website.