Department of History Research Strengths and Projects

Research Strengths

The Department of History has internationally recognized scholars researching and publishing in the areas of Asian history, Australian history, Medieval, Early Modern and Modern European history and United States history.

In 2009, staff from the Department published six books. Details

In 2010, members of the Department are involved in seventeen projects supported by Australian Research Council Grants.

Research Projects

Projects Currently Supported by Australian Research Council Grants

• Reproductive Frontiers: The Twentieth-Century Sciences of Human Hybridity (2008-10)
  (Professor Warwick Anderson)
• Anatomies of Empire: Race, Evolution and Scientific Networks in the Twentieth-Century British World (2009-11)
  (Professor Warwick Anderson, with Dr R L Jones)
• Immigration Restriction and the Racial State, c. 1880 to the present (2009-12)
  (Professor Alison Bashford, with Dr J McAdam and Dr SS Amrith)
• Sierra Leone and Australia: a case of the vanishing twin (2008-10)
  (Dr Emma Christopher) (with Dr MS Delofski and Prof PE Lovejoy)
• Slavery, freedom and colonial development: Robert Bostock and his legacy (2010-14)
  (Dr Emma Christopher)
• Australian/American relations in the era of the new nationalism (2010-12)
  (Dr James Curran)
• The Anatomy and Physiology of Renaissance Florence: the Dynamics of Social Change in the Fifteenth Century (2008-10)
  (Dr Nick Eckstein)
• The politics of reading: Citizenship, law, and literacy in England, 1867-1960 (2010-14)
  (Dr Chris Hilliard)
• Charles Langlade, the Anishinaabeg, and the making and unmaking of the Atlantic World (2009-11)
  (Dr Michael McDonnell)
• Genocide: Critical History of an Idea (2009-11)
  (Associate Professor Dirk Moses)
• Recovered Lives as Windows on the Anglo Colonial World, 1750-1850 (2007-11)
  (Professor Cassandra Pybus)
• A history of Aboriginal Sydney since 1788 (2009-13)
  (Professor Peter Read)
• Private Eyes and Ears: Covert Surveillance in American Life, 1865-1941 (2008-10)
  (Associate Professor Stephen Robertson)
• The International History of Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism, 1814-1822 (2009-12)
  (Professor Glenda Sluga)
• Intercultural inquiry in a trans-national context: Exploring the legacy of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (2010-14) (Dr Martin Thomas, with A/Prof LM Barwick; Prof AJ Marett)
• Touring the past: tourism and history in Australia 1850-2010 (2010-12)
  (Richard White)
• The Making of Black Manhattan (2006-10)
  (Professor Shane White)

Other Projects

• Province, Nation, Empire: France, 1871-1940
  (Professor Robert Aldrich)
• At the Border: Health, Immigration Restriction and the Imagining of Australia, 1901-2001
  (Associate Professor Alison Bashford)
• World Health: the intellectual history of a twentieth century idea
  (Associate Professor Alison Bashford)
• Assimilation and Empire
  (Dr Saliha Belmessous)
• Australia's Black Past: the shared history of transatlantic slave trading and convict transportation to Africa and Australia
  (Dr Emma Christopher)
• Becoming African Americans, 1919-1936
  (Dr Clare Corbould)
• Ophelia Settle Egypt: Social science research, race and gender in the United States, 1930-1950
  (Dr Clare Corbould)
• Beyond the Neighbourhood: The Urban Histories of Sociability and Community in Renaissance Florence, 1400-1500.
  (Dr Nicholas Eckstein)
• A history of terra nullius
  (Dr Andrew Fitzmaurice)
• State formation and European expansion
  (Dr Andrew Fitzmaurice)
• Understanding the concept and meaning of freedom in Western history
  (Dr Andrew Fitzmaurice)
• Complex Words: Literary Judgments in the British Commonwealth, 1920-1970
  (Dr Chris Hilliard)
• The Public University in Australasia (1850-1918)
  (Dr Julia Horne and Professor Geoffrey Sherington)
• Spectacle and Multimedia in late eighteenth-century Europe: A Programme of Written and Multi-Media Histories: The life and work of Philippe de Loutherbourg
  (Professor Iain McCalman)
• Scientific voyages in the Antipodes: Thomas Huxley, John McGillivray and the Darwinian Revolution
  (Professor Iain McCalman)
• Moral Panics and the Law in Eighteenth-Century England
  (Dr Cindy McCreery, with Associate Professor DF Lemmings and Dr CI Walker, University of Newcastle)
• Manning Clark: A Public Life
  (Associate Professor Mark McKenna)
• Status and Empire: Opportunists and Impostors in the British Imperial World, c. 1700 – 1850
  (Dr Kirsten McKenzie)
• Changing models of social status and political power at the Cape of Good Hope: the cross-colonial connections of William Edwards/Alexander Lockaye
  (Dr Kirsten McKenzie)
• The Racial Century, 1850-1950: Biopolitics and Genocide in Germany and Australia
  (Dr Dirk Moses)
• The Construction of Race and Racial Identity at the Antipodes of Empire
  (Professor Cassandra Pybus with Professor Marcus Rediker, (Pittsburgh) Professor Peter Hulme (Essex) Dr Anna Johnston (Tasmania) Dr Anthony Page (Tasmania))
• Interrogating the Book of Negroes: explorations of slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world in the era of the American Revolution
  (Professor Cassandra Pybus, with Prof RL Isaac; Prof I Berlin; Prof OV Burton; and Prof J Sidbury)
• Arctic Romance: Lady Franklin and the Lost Polar Expedition
  (Associate Professor Penny Russell)
• Savagery and Civility: A History of Manners in Colonial Australia
  (Associate Professor Penny Russell)
• La Bella Liberta: Women, Freedom and the History of Italy c 1800-1940
  (Professor Glenda Sluga, Professor Barbara Caine and Professor Ros Pesman)
• Nation, Race, Rights and the New World Order: 1945-1966
  (Professor Glenda Sluga)
• Biographical study of R. H. Mathews (1841-1918), surveyor and ethnologist.
  (Dr Martin Thomas)
• Sounding the Landscape: Representations of Aboriginal culture in Australian audio archives, 1900-1975
  (Dr Martin Thomas)
• European Land and Australian Culture, 1788-2005
  (Professor Richard Waterhouse)
• Cooee: its rise and fall
  (Mr Richard White)
• Driving to Australia: overland journeys between Europe and Australia 1888-1972
  (Mr Richard White)
• Black Metropolis: Harlem, 1915-1930
  (Professor Shane White, Professor Stephen Garton, Dr Graham White and Dr Stephen Robertson)