Associate Professor Penny Russell

PhD Melbourne, BA Hons Monash
Room 849 Brennan Building

+61 2 9351 2362

Penny Russell joined the History Department in 1990. Her research focuses on the 'small talk' of history in Australia and England, seeking within private writing and the intimacies of social encounters (domestic and exotic) the political landscapes of gender and class, race and colonisation. She is fascinated by snobs and social climbers, scandals large and small, and the mysterious ways people lived, loved and learned in times past. These interests intersect in her research on the history of manners in Australia and in her writing on Jane, Lady Franklin, whose bid to rescue her missing Arctic explorer husband Sir John Franklin in the mid-19th century made her a sentimental celebrity in England and across the Western world. Penny's research in these and related areas has been widely published both in Australia and overseas. She has a contract with University of Toronto Press for Arctic Romance: Lady Franklin and the Lost Polar Expedition. She contributes to the cluster of research interest in 'Nation, Empire, Globe' an analysis of the social experience of colonisation in nineteenth-century Australia, particularly for women and particularly amongst elite groups.

Penny is particularly interested in research supervision and has received both the SUPRA 'Supervisor of the Year' award and the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Higher Research Degree Supervision. She has been Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Arts in 2004-5.

• Status and manners in colonial Australia
• Travel, gender and imperialism in nineteenth-century Australia and Britain
• Biography, life writing, subjectivity

• A History of Manners: Savagery and Civility in Colonial Australia (ARC Discovery Project 2005-7)
• Jane, Lady Franklin, 1791-1875

This Errant Lady: Jane Franklin's Overland Journey to Port Phillip and Sydney, 1839 National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2002

A Wish of Distinction: Colonial Gentility and Femininity Melbourne University Press, 1994

Edited Books
Australia's History: Themes and Debates (ed. M. Lyons and P. Russell) University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2005

Memories and Dreams: Reflections on 20th Century Australia (Pastiche II) (ed. R. White and P. Russell) Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1997 (Reprinted, 2002)

For Richer, For Poorer: Early Colonial Marriages Melbourne University Press 1994

'Empathy, Imagination and Feminist History', Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, 13, 2004, pp. 1-11 (feature article in 20th anniversary edition).

‘Ornaments of Empire? Government House and the idea of English Aristocracy in Colonial Australia’, History Australia Vol. 1, No. 2, July 2004, pp. 196-208.

‘An improper education? Jane Griffin’s pursuit of self-improvement and “Truth”, 1811-1812’, History of Education Journal (UK), Vol. 33, No. 3, May 2004, pp. 249-265.

‘Imagining Romance: Geneva 1816’, Australian Feminist Studies, 19 (43) March 2004, pp. 9-18.

'A Woman of the Future? Feminism and conservatism in colonial New South Wales', Women's History Review (UK), 13 (1) 2004, pp. 69-90.

‘Antipodean Queen of Sheba’, Meanjin 62 (4) December 2003, pp. 161-7.

'Cultures of Distinction' in R. White and H. Teo (eds) Cultural History in Australia University of New South Wales Press, Kensington 2003, pp. 158-171.

'The Brash Colonial: Class and Comportment in Nineteenth-Century Australia', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, XII, Cambridge University Press 2002, pp. 431-453.

• Australian nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, with a particular interest in 'intimate' history: family and relationships, love and marriage, the minutiae of social life, the politics of gender
• Travel, gender and imperialism in nineteenth-century Australia and Britain
• Biography, life writing, subjectivity
• Scandal

Co Convenor, Australian Historical Association Conference 1998
Co Convenor, Humanities Research Centre conference on Transnational Biography (with Professors Desley Deacon, ANU and Angela Woollacott, Macquarie), 2006

Keynotes and Plenaries:

'Empathy, Imagination and Feminist History': Keynote Address for Lilith Feminist History Conference, 'Identities: Creation and Representation', 7 November 2003

'Public Journeys, Private Stories’: National Library of Australia Conference, 'Travellers' Tales: Writing about Journeys, Journeys through Writing’, 11-12 April 2003

'The Brash Colonial: Class and Comportment in Nineteenth-Century Australia': Invited paper at Royal Historical Society/ The Huntington Library conference, 'English Politeness', The Huntington, San Marino, California, 14-15 September 2001

'Displaced Loyalties: Vice-Regal Women in Colonial Australia': The 1999 Trevor Reese Memorial Lecture, Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, London 1999.

• Associate Dean, Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Arts
• President, Network for Research in Women's History, Australia
• Correspondent, International Federation for Research in Women's History
  Correspondent, Australian Historical Studies
• President, History Council of New South Wales, 2003-4, currently member of Executive Committee
• Judge, NSW Premier's History Awards, 2002