John Fitzgerald is a China historian. He headed the Asia-Pacific philanthropy studies program at Swinburne University of Technology from 2013 to 2017 after serving five years as China Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing. Before that he was Head of the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University and Director of the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. His books include Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia, awarded the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association, and Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution, awarded the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies.