Christine Kenneally

Christine Kenneally (born in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian-American journalist who writes on science, language and culture. Trained as a linguist, she has written for The New York Times, the New Yorker, Slate, New Scientist, and Australia's Monthly, among other publications. She is a great-granddaughter of JJ Kenneally, an early popularizer of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. Her first book, The First Word (2007) was a L.A. Times book prize finalist and has been translated into Korean and Spanish. Her book for Viking Penguin, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures, was released 9 October 2015. 2Early life and education Kenneally grew up in Melbourne, Australia and received an Honors BA in English and Linguistics from Melbourne University and completed a PhD in Linguistics at Cambridge University in England. At Cambridge she learned to row with the First and Third Trinity Boat Club, eventually rowing for the Cambridge University Women's Boat Club in the lightweight squad, participating in races on the Thames and against Oxford at Henley. In the early 1990s, while at the University of Melbourne, she attended an introductory lecture in linguistics. When she asked the lecturer where language came from, the lecturer responded that linguists do not really explore that topic, or even ask the question, because there is no definitive way to answer it. This always stayed with Kenneally, and when she became a writer, the question became the basis of her first boo