Judith Brett

Judith Margaret Brett (born 1949, Melbourne) is an Emeritus Professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She retired from La Trobe in 2012, after a restructuring of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in which the School of which she was head was dismantled.

Her PhD from Melbourne University's Politics Department in the 1970s was on Austrian fin-de-siècle poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Brett's 2017 biography of Alfred Deakin won the 2018 National Biography Award. Her next book, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory Voting, was shortlisted for the 2019 Queensland Literary Awards University of Southern Queensland History Book Award.

Brett was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2023 Australia Day Honours.

Her 2024 book, Fearless Beatrice Faust, was shortlisted for the Australian history prize at the 2026 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.