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What now for Black Lives Matter? Whatever happens under Biden, the role of African American women will be vital

AAP/AP/Paula Bronstein Clare Corbould, Deakin University During the northern summer, anti-Trump sentiment fused with anti-racist activism in the US, causing huge numbers of Americans to protest all around the country. President Donald Trump has been voted out of office, but the issues at the heart of Black Lives Matter remain as critical as ever. […]

Concepts of national security workshop: Australian and international perspectives

Australian Policy and History Network, Deakin University & National Security College, ANU 25 November 2020 How has the idea of national security evolved over the last 100 years? Who tells us how to feel secure/insecure and how has this changed over time? And how do Australian perspectives, contemporary and historical, compare with other conceptions […]

‘On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike’: Two Perspectives

On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike is a history of the great strike of marrngu (the Pilbara’s Aboriginal pastoral workers) during the later 1940s. This week we feature two reviews of the book, one from the historian and social scientist Tim Rowse, and the other from a former senior Commonwealth bureaucrat in Indigenous […]

Q&A with Richard Broinowski, author of Under the Rainbow: The Life and Times of E.W. Cole

E.W. Cole, proprietor of Cole’s Book Arcade in Melbourne’s Burke Street Mall, was an amazing man. He condemned the White Australian policy when it was unpopular to do so and had decidedly progressive views about religion. He published the famous Cole’s Funny Picture Books and met his wife through an advertisement he placed in the newspaper. Carolyn Holbrook […]

André Brett reviews Jack Vowles and Jennifer Curtin’s ‘A populist exception? The 2017 New Zealand general election’

A Populist Exception? The 2017 New Zealand General Election, eds Jack Vowles and Jennifer Curtin. Canberra: ANU Press, 2020, pp.286+xvi. Print: AU$60, ISBN 9781760463854. Online: free, ISBN 9781760463861. The dust is settling on New Zealand’s 2020 general election. There are still about 480,000 special votes to count—overseas voters, people who registered on election day, […]

Border Wars: History and Creative Imagination

In our latest opinion piece, Richard Trembath steps into the always-contentious debate about history, historical fiction and ‘narrative non-fiction’, prompted by the publication of Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves. Kate Grenville’s latest novel set in early colonial New South Wales, A Room Made of Leaves, was published in July this year to positive reviews […]

Q&A with Jacqueline Kent, author of Vida: A Woman For Our Time

Vida Goldstein is one of Australian history’s most interesting and accomplished figures. She campaigned for the rights of women—including the vote —and the disadvantaged, opposed conscription and the First World War and stood unsuccessfully for federal parliament several times. She ought to be more widely known. Carolyn Holbrook interviewed the acclaimed biographer, journalist and broadcaster […]

Australian Foreign Aid in Historical Context

In our latest opinion piece, Nicholas Ferns, author of the recently published Australia in the Age of International Development, 1945–1975: Colonial and Foreign Aid Policy in Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asia (Palgrave), describes the decline of Australian aid to our region. Reviewing decades of developmental policy to the Pacific and south-east Asia, he argues […]

The Fatal Lure of Politics: A Q&A with Terry Irving on Vere Gordon Childe

Vere Gordon Childe was among the most influential archaeologists of the twentieth century but his connections to the intellectual worlds of the British and Australian Left have, until now, received less attention. In a major new biography, Terry Irving sheds light on Childe’s life as a political theorist, radical intellectual and pre-historian. History PhD student […]

Q&A with Clive Moore, author of Tulagi.

In this Q&A session, Clive Moore talks to Bethany Keats about his recent book, Tulagi, which focuses on the British Solomon Islands Protectorate (BSIP) and its original administrative centre, Tulagi. Why is Tulagi an important story that needs to be told? Tulagi, a small island in the Ngela or Florida Group, was the first […]

Q&A with Russell McGregor, the author of Idling in Green Places: A Life of Alec Chisholm

Idling in green places: A life of Alec Chisholm has been published by Australian Scholarly Publishing and has been shortlisted for the National Biography Award, State Library of NSW. How and why did you become interested in Alec Chisholm (1890-1977) as a biographical and historical subject? The simple answer is that Alec Chisholm was a […]

The Department of Immigration was central to Australia’s post-World War II recovery. What role might it play in Australia’s recovery from COVID 19?

On May 3 Kristina Keneally, the federal opposition Immigration and Home Affairs spokesperson, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that ‘As a result of COVID-19, Australia will soon have an opportunity to do something we have never done before: restart a migration program’. Kenneally has a point. The COVID 19 crisis presents challenges commensurate with […]