Suzanne D. Rutland was born in Sydney, in 1946. She is a Jewish Scholar, Writer, and an associate professor and Chair of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney. Her work includes The Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia, and The Jews in Australia. She is the co-author, with Sam Lipski, of Let My People Go: The Untold Story of Australia and the Soviet Jews 1959-89. They were joint winner of the 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian history.