In this special edition of the Journal of Australian Studies, nine contributors consider the work of missionary women of British, Irish and European origin who worked in the Australian mission field over a period from the 1860s to the 1980s. The articles were first delivered as papers at a workshop held at parliament house in Brisbane in March 2013 to mark International Women’s Day that the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Griffith University sponsored. As the organisers, we hoped that the conjunction of senior and early career historians with several missionary descendants and practitioners from inside the churches would widen discussion of an area of women’s history that warrants closer examination.