Heather Amanda Sutherland (born 1943) is an Australian historian and former professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
In 1970, she started her academic profession as a history teacher at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
[3] Learning of her research interest, Lance Castles from the University of Melbourne who had recently enrolled for Ph.D. under the supervision of Harry J. Benda at Yale University asked his supervisor to invite Sutherland to join their team.
[5][6] Under Benda, Sutherland earned her doctoral degree in 1973 on the thesis titled "Pangreh Pradja: Java's indigenous administrative corps and its role in the last decades of Dutch colonial rule.
[4] In 1974, Sutherland joined the faculty of the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Non-Western Sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam as a "lector" (equivalent to associate professor).