New Horizons in Public History

By Dr Katharine Blake, PHA Blog Editor Public history — history for the general public — is a ‘broad church.’ Diagrammatically it looks like a tree: with its roots in academic history, growing and branching out in many directions. It encompasses various styles; it caters to different audiences; and it’s created by different practitioners in … Read more

‘Christmas Food and Feasting, A History’

…by Minna Muhlen-Schulte In the Antipodes Christmas in July has become a mid-year winter tradition to indulge the food and booze we normally enjoy at the end of the year. What is the historical lineage behind turkeys, puddings, mince pies and mulled wine? In her new book Christmas Food and Feasting PHA NSW member Dr … Read more

Intermarriage in colonial Singapore

  …by Dr Marc Rerceretnam, principal researcher, Yesteryear Heritage Researchers The year 2019 is historically significant in Singapore. It marks the bicentenary of the founding of a modern trading outpost on the island. Although evidence of strong commercial activity goes back as far as the 14th century, by 1819 the island had reverted to a … Read more

After the war: what next?

  … by Francesca Beddie What could be more apt after the four years of WWI commemoration than the question posed at Professional Historians New Zealand’s fifth conference in its twenty-five-year history — After the war: what’s next? And the answer: well, yes, more war history but also more diversity in whose stories are told … Read more

Sailing headlong into 2020: public historians and the 250th anniversary of James Cook

  … by Stephen Gapps Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the waters of considered debate about the commemoration of Australia’s colonial origins, along comes Captain Cook. Again. The famous navigator, once considered to embody the correct set of qualities inherited in modern Australia instead of Governor Phillip and those … Read more

Keep in touch exhibition – a curator’s perspective

  …by Birgit Heilmann I had a busy ‘I am away from my desk’ week in mid-October, installing my new exhibition Keep in touch. After more than one year in the making, I can now sit back and observe how visitors to Hurstville Museum & Gallery engage with this latest exhibition. Keep in touch takes … Read more

Five minutes with Alinde Bierhuizen

  …Alinde Bierhuizen is the newest member of the PHA NSW & ACT committee and its new Secretary. She moved from her home country, the Netherlands, to Sydney last year and currently works as a freelance historian. What made you decide to pursue a career in history? I have always been interested in people: their … Read more

Navigating emotion: one facet of the historian’s job

  by Francesca Beddie… Presenters at the 2018 PHA conference, Marking Time, (Sydney, 30-31 August 2018) embraced its many-faceted topic with insight and sensitivity. They provided us all with much to ponder about the role of public historians in recording the history of people, places and organisations. One theme to emerge was the delicate task … Read more

The Sydney Wars 1788-1817: bringing together the sources

  Emma Dortins reviews Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars: conflict in the early colony 1788-1817, Sydney, NSW, NewSouth Publishing 2018. The Sydney Wars, as its title suggests, brings under a single conceptual umbrella the conflicts between Aboriginal peoples of the Cumberland Plain and the British colonists. It spans  thirty years from the arrival of the … Read more

Reflections on writing an ocean history

  by Dr Joy McCann, Visiting Fellow, School of History, Australian National University…  The central theme explored at the recent annual conference of the Australian Historical Association was ‘The Scale of History’. The organisers asked participants to consider how questions of scale—temporal, geographical, social, archival—influence their research. The theme resonated strongly with me, having recently … Read more