School of Historical Studies News

Humanities Fellowships

Professor Mark Peel elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences.

2008 John and Patricia Ward History Prize

Dr Christina Twomey has won the 2008 John and Patricia Ward History Prize in the NSW Premiers' History Awards. Her book, Australia's Forgotten Prisoners: civilians interned by the Japanese in World War Two was published by Cambridge University Press.

Australian Learning and Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions

Professor Mark Peel has been awarded an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for 'sustained contributions to the imaginative teaching of history and to the transition, progress and welfare of students at his own and other universities.' Read more

2007 Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal

Kate Murphy, PhD graduate from the School of Historical Studies, has been awarded a 2007 Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal for the excellent research presented in the thesis, Gender and the rural-urban divide: fears and fantasies of the Australian elite, 1900-1930.

Dr Murphy already has an impressive publication record having produced a further five works from her doctoral research. Her contribution to the conceptualisation of the relationship between rural and urban space in Australia has been marked as sophisticated and important. Dr Murphy's research project was supervised by Professor Marian Quartly, Professor Barbara Caine and Dr Marc Brodie.

Book Prize

Dr Pam Oliver, one of the School's research associates, has won the Northern Territory Chief Minister's 2007 History Book Award for her book, The Japanese Presence and Australian Reactions 1860s to 1942, published by Charles Darwin University Press.

Empty North considers the positive nature of Japanese immigration to the north of Australia alongside the fear many Australians developed of Japanese resident in White Australia after 1901. The book examines key questions: What part did Japanese people play in the positive development of Australia's Northern Territory? Were Australians' fears of Japanese residents justified? Were Japanese immigrants an official part of Japan's program of southern expansion before World War 2? Did they prepare for Japan's bombing of Australia? These questions are examined within the context of Australia's relations with Japan and Japan's expansion into South East Asia and the Pacific regions.

For further information, http://www.cdu.edu.au/cdupress/books/EmptyNorth.htm

Awards and recognition

Congratulations to Professor Marian Quartly and Dr Judithe Sheard who were awarded an Arts/Information Technology Small Grants Scheme for their project, The Virtual Museum and the presentation of intertwining media and cultural histories - new approaches to compliment contemporary technological developments.

Congratulations to Dr Giovanni Tarantino, one of the School's Honorary Research Associates based at the Monash University Prato Centre, who has been designated as an alternate member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ.

Giovanni has just completed co-editing, with Dr Mario Caricchio from the University of Florence, the first Virtual Seminar hosted by Cromohs (Cyber Review of Modern Historiography), 'Recent historiographical trends of British Studies (17th-18th centuries)'. See website www.cromohs.unifi.it/seminari/
Cromohs is the result of a project begun in 1995, and is informed by the conviction that information technology appplied to communications is destined to play a fundamental role in the field of humanities.

New Postgraduate History Prize

Professor Marian Quartly, well known editor of History Australia, and Sarah Cannon, marketing guru for Monash University ePress, convinced copyright Agency Limited (CAL) to contribute to a new significant Postgraduate History Prize worth $4000.

The Prize is for an unpublished article-length work of historical research in any area of historical enquiry, produced by a postgraduate student enrolled in an Australian university during 2007. As well as the prize money, the winning work will also be published in History Australia and Marian Quartly reserves the right to publish up to three shortlisted articles.

The AHA executive committee will appoint a panel of three eminent historians to select the winning article and the winner will be announced at the AHA Biennial Conference to be held in July 2008 at the University of Melbourne.

Australian Research Council Linkage Grant

Andrew Markus and his fellow investigators Monash University psychologist Nicky Jacobs and La Trobe University sociologist John Goldlust have been awarded an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant in the latest round of funding, for a project called Understanding identity, social change and emerging needs: Melbourne's Jewish community and Australian society. This research will be undertaken with the organisation Jewish Care.

In this project, Andrew and his fellow researchers will be investigating how the identity of members of religious and ethnic groups has changed over the last decades, and the significance of changes that may be occurring. This research builds on two earlier studies to establish the patterns of change within the Jewish community of Melbourne. On the basis of these it will investigate other ethno-religious communities in Melbourne and Sydney. The result will be a richly detailed analysis of communal identity in the first decade of the twentieth century, and it will provide the basis for informed development of policy at the national, state and communal levels.

Inaugural Arts in Action Festival

Meet Monsh University staff, students, graduates and colleagues as they analyse, investigate and debate ideas, issues and opinions.

You can select your own program with over 500 discussions, lectures, workshops, films, displays including a comprehensive and fascinating selection of sessions from the School of Historical Studies. For more details www.arts.monash.edu.au/artsinaction07. To view the School of Historical Studies programe see School of Historical Studies Arts in ACTION [pdf 36kb]

Dr Peter Howard appointed as Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti

Peter Howard has been appointed as Visiting Professor to the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies: Villa I Tatti for the first semester of the 2007/2008 academic year.

The Harvard University Center for Italian renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti - the villa bequeathed to Harvard in 1959 by the art historian Bernard Berenson - is devoted to advanced study of the Italian Renaissance in all its aspects. in leaving I Tatti to Harvard, Berenson wished to establish a center of scholarship that would advance humanistic learning throughout the world and increase understanding of the values by which civilizations develop and survive. For more information, see http://www.itatti.it/

Peter will be working on 'The studia of fifteenth-century Florence as communities of learning'.

ARC Success

In the Australian Research Council's Discovery Grants for 2008, the School enjoyed considerable success, winning $1,427,564 of funding.

Professor Barbara Caine was awarded a professorial fellowship for her project on autobiography, biography and the history of the self in the British World from 1750 to 1980. In providing a new way of linking autobiography and biography with the history of identity and of the self, this project will open new avenues for the study of history. At a time when biography is so very popular and widely read, it offers the possibility of bringing academic scholarship closer to questions of general interest to the community and thus re-enforcing the significance of academic research in  the humanities.

Dr Jason Taliadoros, one of the School's research associates, won a postdoctoral fellowship for Sacred rules, secular revelations: the conceptions of rights in pre-modern Europe. This project will provide a deeper understanding of the origins of and background to contemporary debates on the role of religion in law, and vice-versa. This is particularly relevant at a time when law and human rights face questions about their moral and normative qualities. It will contribute to debates about the origins of the humanities in higher learning by reminding us that such studies had their origins in resolving practical problems and conflicts, rather than esoteric ends.

Professor Andrew Markus secured a grant for a a comparative history of Yiddish Melbourne. Given the aging of the Australian population, immigration remains a vital national concern. This makes clear the national and community benefit of research into the effectiveness of immigration policy and the experience of immigrants. Andrew's study will be of particular importance for its innovative approach to evaluation of the successes and failures of policy, of the factors which facilitate immigrant success, and the adaptation to Australian life of members of second and third generation migrants.

Professor Mark Peel and Associate Professor Jude McCulloch (of the University School of Political and Social Inquiry) won a grant for their project a history of the Victorian Community Legal Centre movement. Community legal centres have identified and addressed ways of improving access to justice for a range of groups. This historical study of a movement that successfully harnessed volunteers and created partnerships between experts and communities will produce important insights into strategies for continued success in legal centres, as well as other government and non-government organisations. The study will assist centres by documenting their strengths and challenges, encouraging self-reflection, and providing opportunities for discussion of present and future objectives.

Lastly, Associate Professor Bain Attwood was awarded a grant for a study of comparative study of dispossession, history and restorative justice. By comparing how the property rights and sovereignty of aboriginal people were treated in British colonies of settlement in Australia, New Zealand and Canada in the nineteenth century, how this process was understood and registered in stories narrated by contemporaries and their descendants, and how the settler societies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada have tried to deal with the consequences of their histories in the last thirty or so years, this project seeks to shed new light on Australian history and contribute to ongoing debate about this country might best tackle the work of restorative justice.