Seamus O'Hanlon - School of Historical Studies Staff

Personal History

I have degrees from the University of Melbourne and Monash University. I completed my PhD in the School of Historical Studies here at Monash under the supervision of Professor Graeme Davison in 1999 and have been a member of the teaching staff of the School since then.

My first major sole-authored book, Together Apart; boarding house, hostel and flat life in prewar Melbourne, based on my PhD thesis, was short-listed in the Local and Community history category of the NSW Premier's History Awards in 2003. More recently I published Go!: Melbourne in the Sixties , co-edited with Tanja Luckins of the University of Melbourne, which was commended in the Collaborative/Community category of the Victorian Community History Awards in 2007.

Current Research

My current research mainly revolves around the impact of economic, social and cultural change on the inner city in Australia and elsewhere in the contemporary period. With Professor Tony Dingle of Buseco, I was awarded funding in the 2006 ARC Discovery round to undertake a large three-year project around the topic of 'Deindustrialisation and re-inventing the inner city: a tale of two cities, inner Melbourne and Geelong c1970-2000' (DP0663310) Arising from this research, in September 2007 I hosted a Monash University/Kings College-funded symposium entitled 'Globalisation, gentrification adn the re-invention of the inner city; at Monash's Prato Centre. A selection of papers from this symposium, co-edited with Professor Chris Hamnett of Kings, will be published in a special edition of Urban Policy and Research in early 2009.

Other current research projects include: co-editing (with Lionel Frost of Buseco) a special edition of the Australian Economic History Review that profiles practise and practitioners in the discipline of urban history in Australia in the period since the 1970s; a study of the emergence of flat and apartment living in cities in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century, including the role of immigrants in changing attitudes to house, home and urban culture in those cities; and a larger collaborative project that investigates the impact of Jewish people on the built form and culture of cities in the former British Empire in the period 1850 to the present. I am also involved in a number of studies that investigate histories of everyday life and domestic culture in Australia in the twentieth century.

Major Publications

Books
S. O'Hanlon, Together Apart: boarding house, hostel and flat life in prewar Melbourne, ASP, Melbourne, 2002

Edited Books
S. O'Hanlon and T. Luckins (eds), Go!: Melbourne in the Sixties, Circa, Melbourne, 2005

Book Chapters
S. O'Hanlon and T. Luckins, 'Setting the scene: the idea of the Sixties', in S. O'Hanlon and T. Luckins (eds), Go!: Melbourne in the Sixties, Circa, Melbourne, 2005, pp. vii-xxii
S. O'Hanlon, 'Where all the action is man: Youth cultures in 1960s Melbourne', in S. O'Hanlon and T. Luckins (eds), Go!: Melbourne in the Sixties, Circa, Melbourne, 2005, pp. 45-57
S. O'Hanlon, 'Cities, suburbs and communities', in M. Lyons and P. Russell (eds), Australia's history: themes and debates, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2005, pp. 172-189
S. O'Hanlon, 'Tenants', in P.Yule (ed), Carlton: A History, MUP, Melbourne, 2004, pp. 111-121

Refereed Journal Articles
S. O'Hanlon, 'Full board and lodging: hostels for migrant workers in early postwar Melbourne', History Australia, Vol 2, No. 5, December 2005, pp. 88.1-88.15
S. O'Hanlon, 'Sound of the brogue soon on city trams: Irish immigrants in post-war Melbourne', Australian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol 5, 2005, pp. 36-50
S. O'Hanlon, ''All found', they used to call it: Genteel Boarding Houses in Early Twentieth Century Melbourne', Urban History, 29, 2 September 2002, pp. 239-253

Refereed Conference Papers
S.O'Hanlon and Simone Sharpe, 'Selling lifestyle: marketing Melbourne's inner city apartments c1990-2005', in C.McConville (ed), Seachange: new and renewed urban landscapes, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, 2008
T. Dingle and S. O'Hanlon, 'Space for your imagination: de-industrialising and re-imagining inner Melbourne c1970-2000', in C. Miller and M. Roche (eds),Past Matters: Heritage, History and the Environment, Proceedings from the 8th Australasian Urban History/ Planning History Conference, Wellington, NZ, 2006, pp. 401-412
T. Dingle and S. O'Hanlon, 'The inner city transformed: industrial and post-industrial Melbourne in pictures c1970-2005', in B. Gleeson (ed), State of Australian Cities 05: Conference proceedings, Griffith University, Brisbane, 2005 (CD-ROM)

Areas of Research & Supervision

Nineteenth and twentieth-century Australian and British urban, social and cultural history; youth cultures; immigration history; history of technology; heritage, museums and public history; histories of housing.

Teaching

INT1020 - Contemporary Worlds 2
HYM4095 - History and Heritage
HSY4210 - History and Memory
HYM4510 - History and the Museum
HYM4560 - The Past Around Us
HYM4620 - Family History and Genealogy