The Australian Historical Association
The site for and about historians working in or on Australia.
Congratulations to editor Jane Lydon and contributors including other AHA members for the publication of their new book Visualising Human Rights (UWA Publishing 2018). This edited collection looks at the ways that visual images have been used to define, contest, or argue on behalf of human rights. This book explores ideas of humanity, citizenship, atrocity and justice through the visual. It is Read more …
Emeritus Professor Eric Richards, 1940-2018 It is tremendously sad to report the sudden passing of Emeritus Professor Eric Richards, Flinders University, aged 78, on 21 September while in London. Eric will be remembered as one of the great Australian historians of the last 50 years, having won numerous awards, including Australian Historian of the Year Read more …
In Australian Policy and History’s latest policy brief, Associate Professor Noah Riseman sets himself the task of briefing Defence Minister Christopher Pyne on whether the government should provide an apology and redress to former LGBT members of the Australian Defence Force for policies that discriminated against them. This brief was also written up in The Guardian. If you would like to write a public service-style Read more …
UTS Research Fellow Dr Alana Piper is running a survey on public interest and attitudes towards crime history. Any participation in the survey, or promotion of it to members’ organisations, email lists or students, is much appreciated. This anonymous online survey takes 5-10 minutes to complete. Further information.
It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Emeritus Professor John Molony: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/anu-historian-john-molony-dead-at-91-20180920-p5050a.html. After many years as a Catholic priest, John Molony began his academic career at the Australian National University in the mid-1960s, becoming one of Australia’s most respected historians, Manning Clark Professor of Australian History and Head of the Department of History Read more …
Over the past eight years, ANU historian Martin Thomas has been working on Etched in Bone, a feature-length documentary made that he has made in collaboration with Béatrice Bijon from ANU’s School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics. The film examines the theft of Aboriginal human remains by the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land in Read more …
Congratulations to Marilyn Lake for the forthcoming publication of her book Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform (Harvard University Press, 2019). The book points to the significance of turn-of-the-twentieth-century exchanges between American and Australasian reformers who shared racial sensibilities, along with a commitment to forging an ideal social order. Progressive New World demonstrates that race and reform Read more …
Congratulations to Tim Causer and Philip Schofield, whose open access pre-publication version of Jeremy Bentham’s Writings on Australia, a forthcoming edited volume of their The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, is now available to download. This work consists of seven texts, several of which are made available for the first time, and include Bentham’s earliest detailed engagement with the New South Wales penal colony, his detailed Read more …
Congratulations to Dr. Frances M. Clarke and her collaborator Rebecca Jo Plant, who have received the Coordinating Council of Women Historians’ Carol Gold Award for the best article in any field in a peer reviewed journal in 2017 for “No Minor Matter: Underage Soldiers, Parents, and the Nationalization of Habeas Corpus in Civil War America,” Law and History Review 35:4 Read more …
Congratulations to Professor Lyndall Ryan who has been awarded the 2018 Annual History Citation in recognition of her research and teaching in women’s and Indigenous History and service to the profession in the 2018 History Council New South Wales Awards: Further information.