The Public History Prize seeks to encourage historical practice that is applied to real world issues. It invites entries from undergraduate, graduate diploma and master students in NSW and the ACT , which demonstrate excellence in writing or other media, and the ability to interpret the past in a contextual way. The Prize for … Read more
Bruce Baskerville gives a taste of his paper at the recent Australian Historical Association conference in Newcastle. The presentation was based on part of chapter three in his 80,000 word PhD thesis, so giving just a 20-minute talk was a challenge. As one speaker at the conference noted ‘constraint is enabling’, in other words, a field … Read more
… a heritage consultant at JCIS Consultants. My work focuses on the east coast of Australia. In my practice, I am never sure whether I am a historian, archaeologist or a geographer and often I think I am all at the one time. Certainly, my research interests are not confined to a single discipline. … Read more
By Paul Irish, whose book Hidden In Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney (2017) is out now, published by NewSouth Publishing. We all recognise the Sydney Opera House. Many of us also know that it is built on a point named after early colonial Aboriginal identity Bennelong, who lived there in the … Read more
‘History is not a single story’, writes Larissa Behrendt in the recently published The Honest History Book, whose main aim is to counter what it sees as Anzackery or the inflation of the Anzac myth over other aspects of Australia’s past. Professional historians have much to contribute to uncovering the multitude of stories that … Read more
by Deborah Beck Exactly one hundred years ago, Rayner Hoff was in France, serving in the British Army in the Great War. Eighty years ago, in 1937, he died in Australia, aged 42, at the height of his career as a respected and accomplished sculptor. As the Anzac Commemoration Service takes place this year, … Read more
I teach Australian history and public history in the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia. In late 2016 I established a research Centre for Applied History in the Faculty of Arts with colleagues in Ancient History, Media, Culture and Communications and Geography and Planning.This Centre draws upon Macquarie University’s nationally … Read more
Rebecca is a historian of design. She works as a freelance writer specialising in architecture, design and history, preferably writing about all three together. What made you decide to pursue a career in history? I previously worked in marketing. After 12 years I needed a change. I didn’t know what that change looked like … Read more
by Peter Hobbins… “Where are the bodies buried?” For historians, who are not prone to excavation – or to desecrating graves – this seems an inappropriate question. Yet it’s one of the most common queries raised during the many public tours and talks that I’ve given on Sydney’s former Quarantine Station at North Head, near … Read more
… a freelance historian, heritage consultant and editor who loves working on community histories. Naomi’s current area of interest is the life and milieu of Musquito, who was exiled from NSW in 1805 and hanged in Tasmania as a bushranger in 1825. What made you decide to pursue a career in history? I grew … Read more