Richard Broome worked at La Trobe University as a lecturer in Australian history between 1977 and 1981, before leaving academia to work as a commissioned historian, beginning with Arriving (1984), the first in three volumes commemorating European settlement in Victoria.
He returned to La Trobe in 1987. Since then, he has written extensively on the history of Aboriginal Australians in Victoria, including Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800, which won the NSW Premier's Australian history prize in 2006.
Broome served on the History Institute of Victoria for ten years, as well as working as a consultant to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.
