Julia Woodlands Baird (born 19 February 1970) is an Australian journalist, broadcaster and author. She contributes to The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald and was a regular host of The Drum, a television news review program on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Her non-fiction work includes a bestselling memoir, a biography of Queen Victoria and a meditation on the experience of grace during a time of dark politics.
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Early life and education
Baird was born in Sydney, to Judith (née Woodlands) and Bruce Baird, who would become the deputy leader of the New South Wales Liberal Party. She and her brothers spent their early childhood in Rye, New York, while her father was Australian trade commissioner in Manhattan. After the family returned to Australia in 1980, Baird attended Ravenswood School for Girls. Her HSC results placed her in the top 20 students in NSW. Baird earned a BA degree and later a PhD in history from the University of Sydney. Her honours thesis, titled "Pigeons, Priests and Prophets: the politicisation of women in the Anglican church", examined the campaign to have women ordained in that denomination. Her doctoral thesis was on women in politics and how they are treated by mainstream media. In 2005, she was a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University researching the globalisation of American opinion in the lead up to the Iraq War. In 2018, the University of Divinity made Baird an honorary Doctor of Divinity for her "contribution as a public intellectual to the wider community in the area of religion".