High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Karin Nicole Sowada (born 1 November 1961) is an Australian archaeologist and former politician. She served two years as an Australian Democrats senator for New South Wales between 1991 and 1993, filling the casual vacancy created by the resignation of Paul McLean. Defeated at the 1993 election, she briefly returned to public life in 1998 as a republican delegate to the Constitutional Convention that led to the 1999 Australian republic referendum. Sowada served as the assistant curator of the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney between 1996 and 2005. Karin is a researcher in Egyptian archaeology with Macquarie University in Sydney and is a specialist in the foreign relations of Egypt and the Near East during the Bronze Age. She also works as Chief Executive Officer of the Anglican Deaconess Institution Sydney Limited.