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Dr David Dunstan

Senior Lecturer & Joint Coordinator, Graduate Publishing and Editing Program

B.A. (hons) (Mon); PhD (Melb), Grad. Dip. Edit&Pub (RMIT), TSTC (State College Vic,Hawthorn)

View contact details in Monash Staff Directory

Biography

Research Interests

David is an Australian university teacher and researcher with many books and published essays to his credit. He is an accredited supervisor of higher degree research at Monash University, an active collaborator in collective research and an historian who has had wide experience in industry, in public administration and journalism. He has taught Australian Studies and Australian History at the University of Melbourne, Deakin, RMIT and Monash universities.

David’s specialist areas of interest include the study of Australian society and culture, biography, heritage, industrial and regional communities, publishing, newspapers and media, sport and Australian communities abroad.

He was instrumental in developing the Arts Faculty’s Graduate Publishing and Editing program and undergraduate units in Australian Studies, including Sports Studies units and served as Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies 2004–2006.  He subsequently served until 2010 as Deputy Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies in the School of Journalism and Australian Studies in the Faculty of Arts.  He is currently Joint Coordinator of the Graduate Publishing and Editing Program at Monash University.

David completed his Arts degree with first class honours in History at Monash University in 1974 and his doctorate (also in History) at the University of Melbourne in 1983. He is a trained secondary teacher and has taught in Victorian secondary schools. He completed the Graduate Diploma in Editing and Publishing at RMIT University in 1995. David has worked as a freelance journalist and historian as well as a Victorian public servant.  He has worked as a consultant and researcher for industry and government. He was an historian, planner and administrator with the Victorian Ministry for Planning and Environment and the Historic Buildings Council (now Heritage Victoria) for six years. From 1990 to 1993 he was with Museum Victoria. From 1994 to 1996 he was a Lecturer in Public History with the History Department at Monash University (now the School of Historical Studies) and a consultant historian and author to the Royal Exhibition Building. He is a member of ICOM, the Australian Historical Association, InASA and other professional associations.

David joined the National Centre for Australian Studies in 1997 and was its Director from 2004 to 2006. David has been the recipient of research and project grants from the Australian Research Council, the Co-operative Research Centre for Tourism, the Institute for Global Movements, Monash International and industry and business.

Melbourne

David has written extensively on Melbourne's history. His doctoral thesis on Melbourne’s nineteenth century government was published as Governing the Metropolis (Melbourne University Press 1984) and remains a standard work. His interest in Melbourne, its governance, politics, history and public culture is reflected in many chapters in books, essays and articles and entries for the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Encyclopedia of Melbourne (Cambridge University Press 2005 and online).  He is a contributor to public debates about the city’s governance and its planning. His urban history interests embrace government and politics, social reform, built form and planning, low life, population movements, consumption, newspapers and the media, popular culture, the drink trades, crime and sport.  He has a long standing interest in the history of the Australian wine industry.

Exhibitions

David’s interest in Exhibitions and Public Culture are represented in his current publications. His Victorian Icon: Melbourne’s Exhibition Building (1996) remains an important study of this World Heritage Listed site. He contributed to the standard international text on the subject the Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs and Expositions edited by John Findling and Kimberley Pelle (McFarland Publishing, 2008) with entries on the Melbourne International Exhibition, 1880-81 and the Centennial International Exhibition, 1888-89. He also contributed to Kate Darian-Smith et al. Seize the Day: Exhibitions, Australia and the World (Monash ePress 2008)

Abroad

He has researched the experience of Australians abroad and with Carl Bridge and Robert Crawford of Kings College, London, has edited a book of essays on Australians in Britain in the twentieth century published by Monash ePress. David finds that we learn much about Australia and Australians through the experience of expatriates and travellers both abroad and at home. Equally, that many early diplomatic initiatives in the post 1945 era were conducted through sport. His studies of international cricket undertaken with his colleague Dr Tom Heenan include the career of Sir Donald Bradman and the cricketing nations of the Imperial (now the International) Cricket Council.

On behalf of NCAS and the Monash Institute for Global Movements he was a convenor of the Southern Worlds conference on South Africa and Australia compared to held 25-28 November, 2008 at Monash South Africa. 

The papers of this conference are to be published this year by Australian Scholarly Publishing.

The Press, Media and Publishing

David is working on a long term project on the history of the Melbourne Herald newspaper and Australian journalists, columnists, correspondents and cartoonists at home and abroad. His interest in biography and journalism has resulted in a scholarly edition of a convict autobiography Owen Suffolk’s Days of Crime and Years of Suffering (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2000) and a collection of his father, Keith Dunstan’s journalism, The Melbourne I Remember: Batman in the Bulletin (Arcadia 2004). An active interest in Australian publishing stems from his co-ordination of the Graduate Publishing Program with Melbourne publisher Nick Walker. David contributed to David Carter and Anne Galligan Making Books Contemporary Australian Publishing (University of Queensland Press, 2007).

Wine

David’s interest in the history of viticulture and winemaking has a scholarly basis in the social and cultural significance and achievements of these trades   the history of wine and viticulture in Australia and the role drink has played in our culture; also, industry regulation, temperance, prohibitionist and anti-drink trade movements, the regional character of wine and concepts of terroir. David is the author of Better Than Pommard! A History of Wine in Victoria (1994) and Wine from the Hills (2000). A full revision  of Better Than Pommard! is underway. He is also writing a commissioned history of the Viticultural Society of Victoria. David is in demand as a supervisor and as an assessor of research projects in this area. He contributed an introduction to Fay Woodhouse, Vintage Stories: 150 year history of Tahbilk (2010) and an essay on the growth of table wine consumption in the post-war era in a forthcoming book of essays for Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Consumer Australia.  

Sport

His commitment to undergraduate teaching at NCAS has prompted a research interest in sport. Together with his colleague Dr Tom Heenan he is researching the history of Australian-Indian cricket and as part of his wider interest in newspaper history is researching Australian sports writers and writing. David contributed a paper on the 1947-48 Indian Cricket Tour of Australia to the Indian Australian Studies Conference (IASA) held at Kolkata, India, in January, 2008. Together with Tom Heenan he has written on Sir Donald Bradman for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Cricket (2011).

Keywords

Melbourne, History, Cities, Exhibitions, Governance, Biography, Wine, Viticulture, Cricket, the Press, Australians Abroad, the British World, Sport, Publishing, Heritage.

Areas of Supervision

David has supervised more than thirty higher degree research theses, including 4th year Honours and Masters qualifying, Masters and Doctoral theses. David supervises students in Tourism, Australian Studies and History, and Publishing. He has co-supervised higher degree research students with colleagues in other Schools and Departments in the Faculty of Arts and with the faculties of Business and Economics and Art and Design at Monash University and other Australian universities.

He is interested in supervising future studies in the following areas:

• Australian newspaper and media history
• Australian communities abroad
• The history and culture of viticulture, wine, food and drink in Australia
• Regional and remote communities
• The history of travel and tourism
• Australian biography, autobiography and popular narratives
• The history of Australian publishing
• Popular and material culture
• Australian capital cities and their governance
• Australian sports writing
• Australian national and international sport

Recent doctoral completions supervised by him include:

• Morna Sturrock, Bishop of Magnetic Power: James Moorhouse in Melbourne, 1877–1987 (2005) subsequently published as a book by Australian Scholarly Publishing.
• T.M. Mike Williams, Melbourne and Country Victoria: the Drift to the City: 1916–1918 (2007).
• Josette Wells, ‘One Voice For Australia’: A Marketing History of Australia’s National Tourist Organisation — 1929–1967 (2010).

Current Research Projects and Grants

Australian journalists in London, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College London, Fellowship 2010.

Teaching

With Nick Walker, David co-ordinates and teaches the Graduate Publishing and Editing program conducted by NCAS. With other colleagues, Dr Tom Heenan and Dr David Nadel, he teaches in the undergraduate Sports Studies program and is an occasional contributor to the Graduate Tourism and other programs conducted by NCAS.

Publications

David contributes to scholarly journals in Australia and is a reviewer and contributor to the national and local press.

David has been a prolific contributor the Australian Dictionary of Biography with more than thirty individual entries under his name. Recent published entries include the Victorian Premier, Sir Henry Bolte, the Lord Mayor and architect, Sir Bernard Evans, the journalist, Frederick Howard and the vine breeder and CSIRO scientist, Alan Antcliff in volume 17 published in 2007. The Australian Dictionary of Biography is a free to the public on-line resource conducted by the Australian National University

David’s studies of Victorian premiers William Watt, John Murray and Sir Henry Bolte appeared as chapters in The Victorian Premiers (Federation Press, 2006) edited by Brian Costar and Paul Strangio.

David was an Associate Editor of The Encyclopedia of Melbourne Cambridge University Press, 2005 and is the the author of major entries including ‘Politics’ ‘Municipal Government’, ‘Mayoralty’, ‘Melbourne City Council’, ‘Health’, ‘Heritage’. The Encyclopedia of Melbourne is a free to the public online resource.

David’s Governing the Metropolis: Melbourne 1851-1891 (Melbourne University Press 1984) is a standard work on the history of Melbourne. With Graeme Davison and Chris McCorville, he edited The Outcasts of Melbourne (1984).

David is an editor of the Journal of Publishing published by Australian Scholarly Press. His essay ‘Food and Drink: the appearance of an Australian publishing subculture’ (co-authored with Annette Chaitman) was included in David Carter and Anne Galligan (eds) Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing (University of Queensland Press, 2007). His writings on the history of wine, wine tourism and viticulture include ‘With Sam Benwell and the House of Lords Journeying to Wine in Victoria’ in Culinary Distinction: Journal of Australian Studies No. 87, 2006, and ‘A Sobering Experience: From ‘Australian Burgundy’ to ‘Kanga Rouge’: Australian wine battles on the London market 1900 to 1981’ Journal of Australian Studies (UK) 2002. His book Better Than Pommard! A History of Wine in Victoria remains the standard history of the Victorian wine industry in the nineteenth century.

David’s book Victorian Icon: Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building (1996) is a large format extensively illustrated multi-author book which he edited. Its publication helped this last of the world’s great nineteenth century exhibition halls achieve World Heritage Listing.

In-press

• (with Tom Heenan) Don Bradman:  Just a Boy from Bowral in Anthony Bateman and Jeffrey Hill eds. The Cambridge Companion to Cricket (forthcoming 2011)
• (with Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay) Australian Studies: Reading History, Culture and Identity, New Delhi, World View Press, 2010

Books

• Morris of Rutherglen: a Celebration of 150 Years, Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009.
• (with Philip Bentley), The Path to Professionalism: Physiotherapy in Australia to the 1980s Melbourne, Victoria, Australian Physiotherapy Association, 2006

Edited Books

• (with John Niewenhuysen) Southern Worlds:  South Africa and Australia Compared, Ausralian Scholarly Publishing, 2010.
• (with Carl Bridge and Robert Crawford) Australians in Britain: The Twentieth Century Experience, Monash ePress, 2009.
• Owen Suffolk’s Days of Crime and Years of Suffering (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2000)

Book Chapters

• (with Tom Heenan) 'Burnt Bridges:  Australian Cricket and the Subcontinent 1888-1960' in David Dunstan, Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay, and Shibnath Banerjee eds. Australian Studies:  Reading History, Culture and Identity Worldview Publications, Delhi 2010.
• ‘We came on a holiday like you’: The Australian community press in London in the 1970s and 80s’ in Carl Bridge, Robert Crawford and David Dunstan (eds) ‘Australians in Britain: The Twentieth Century Experience’, Monash University e-Press, 2009.15.1-18.
• ‘The exhibitionary complex personified: Melbourne’s nineteenth century displays and the mercurial Dr LL Smith’, Seize the Day: Exhibitions, Australia and the World edited by Kate Darian-Smith, et. al. Monash University e-press, 2008, pp. 8.1-8.
• (with Annette Chaitman) ‘Food and Drink: the appearance of a publishing subculture’ in Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing edited by David Carter and Anne Galligan, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 2007.
• ‘John Murray and William Watt: the Odd Couple’ and ‘Henry Bolte: the Lucky Developer’ in The Victorian Premiers edited by Brian Costar and Paul Strangio, Federation Press, Sydney 2006.
• ‘When Clown Hall Really was Town Hall’ (with John Young) in Seamus O’Hanlon and Tanja Luckins (eds) GO! Melbourne in the Sixties” Circa Publishing Melbourne 2005.

Refereed Journal Articles

• ‘With Sam Benwell and the House of Lords Journeying to Wine in Victoria’ in Culinary Distinction edited by Emma Constantino and Sian Supski, Special edition of the Journal of Australian Studies No. 87, 2006, pp.87-99.
• ‘A Sobering Experience: From ‘Australian Burgundy’ to ‘Kanga Rouge’: Australian wine battles on the London market 1900 to 1981.’ Journal of Australian Studies vol. 17 No.2 Winter 2002 (pub 2004), pp.179-210.

Other Articles

• ‘Joseph Reed; A City’s Greatest Architect’ Australian Heritage March 2010, pp. 39-44.
•  (with Jock Collins, Simon Darcy, Kirrily Jordan, Ruth Skilbeck, Simone Grabowski, Vicki Peel, Gary Lacey and Tracey Firth) in Jock Collins et.al., Cultural Landscapes of Tourism in New South Wales and Victoria CRC for Sustainable Tourism Pty Ltd 2008, ( ISBN 9781920965822).         

Encyclopedia/Dictionary Entries

• ‘Melbourne International Exhibition, 1880-81’, ‘Centennial International Exhibition, 1888-89, Melbourne’ in Encyclopedia of Worlds Fairs and Expositions edited by John Findling and Kimberley Pelle, McFarland, North Carolina, 2008.
• Antcliff, Alan (1923–1985) Australian Dictionary of Biography vol 17, Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp. 28-29.
• Bolte, Sir Henry Edward (1908–1990) Australian Dictionary of Biography vol 17, Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp. 119-124.
• Evans, Sir Bernard (1905–1981) Australian Dictionary of Biography vol 17, Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp. 364-365.
• Bolte, Sir Henry Edward (1908–1990) Australian Dictionary of Biography vol 17, Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp. 119-124
• Howard, Frederick James (1904–1984) Australian Dictionary of Biography vol 17, Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp. 552-553.
• The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2005. (Associate Editor and author of major entries: ‘Politics’ ‘Municipal Government’, ‘Mayoralty’, ‘Melbourne City Council’, ‘Health’, ‘Heritage’, etc.)

Conferences

• 'Found in Translation:  Textual Explorations of Australia and the World', 20-25 September, 2010, Monash Prato Centre, Italy.
• 'Re Viewing History', Australian Historical Association Conference 5-9 July, 2010, University of Western Australia.
• 'Dis/solutions: the Future of the Past in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific' 10th Biennial conference of the European Australian Studies Association (EASA), Universitat des Illes Balears, 2009. Palma de Mallorca. Paper: 'A Mediterranean Idealist in Australia: the experience and advocacy of John Ignatius Bleasdale (1822-1884)'.
• Re-imagining Australian Studies, Indian Australian Studies Conference (IASA) Kolkata, India January, 2008.

Reviews

• Breaking the bank: an extraordinary colonial robbery by Carol Baxter, Historical Studies,2, 2009 University of Melbourne, , pp. 260-261.
• ‘The Independent Type’ (Exhibition State Library of Victoria) History Australia, 3, 2009, 78.1-3.

Professional Memberships and Editorial Positions

• Chair, Victorian Working Party Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Member ICOM Australia
• Member, InASA
• Member, Australian Historical Association
• Member, Australian Society for Sport History

Community Engagement

• Board Member, Australian Dictionary of Biography