On 21 October an event was held at University House to farewell Emeritus Professor Tom Griffiths as chair of the Australian Dictionary of Biography's editorial board, a role he has filled for twenty years. We also welcomed incoming chair, Professor Kate Fullagar, who is taking on the role.

The occasion also provided an opportunity to present Tom with an ADB Medal in recognition of his long and distinguished service to the Dictionary. The Medal citation captures Tom's many and varied contributions to the ADB since he took up the role of chair in 2006. It reads as follows:

Thomas Rhys (Tom) Griffiths joined the ANU in 1997 upon returning to Australia from being deputy head of the Menzies Centre of Australian Studies at King’s College London. Little did he know when he accepted John Ritchie’s invitation to chair the ADB’s Commonwealth Working Party in July 1999 and became a member of the Editorial Board that this was the start of over two decades holding crucially important executive positions in the ADB.

Tom was familiar with the ADB well before that. His father-in-law the Reverend Dr Arthur de Quetteville Robin, Anglican clergyman, theologian, and historian, wrote six ADB articles over two decades beginning in 1964. Arthur’s daughter and Tom’s wife, historian Elizabeth Anne de Quetteville (Libby) Robin, went on to write three articles. Tom himself first published with the ADB in 1988 – an entry on the wondrously eccentric John Pomeroy, ‘inventor and pieman’ – and he subsequently wrote three more beautifully crafted articles. He was drawn into the ADB, too, by his friendship with Ken Inglis, who had retired as chair of the Editorial Board after nearly two decades’ tenure. Tom also followed in Ken’s footsteps by becoming the W. K. Hancock Chair of History at the ANU (2011-2018).

From the time Tom succeeded Jill Roe as chair of the Editorial Board in 2006, he was a forceful and effective leader. His achievements include the endowment campaign he waged. Former authors and supporters answered Tom’s invitation to contribute and revitalise the ADB endowment fund. For Tom, it was process as well as outcome that mattered. Tom went from being party to ARC applications for digitization of the ADB to actively advocating to increase the representation of Indigenous subjects. While the latter was funded by an ARC grant, no resources were provided to the ADB. Tom located a funding opportunity in the J. T. Reid Charitable Trusts and, with Shino Konishi and Malcolm Allbrook, successfully applied for a grant, first for the Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography (IADB) and, more recently and generously, for the First Nations Biography Australia (FNBA) project. This has resulted in Tom, Shino and Malcolm editing Reframing Indigenous Biography (2025) and its companion, the IADB 100 lives (forthcoming). Tom has proved himself a subtly effective fighter for the ADB, no less recently over the ‘ANU Renew’ proposed cuts to the ADB in 2025.

Tom’s success as a leader for the ADB derives from his standing in the Australian historical community. Tom Griffiths, BA (Hons) (University of Melbourne), PhD (Monash University), was foundation director of the Centre for Environmental History at the ANU. Much of his work has been on fire and ice. He has been awarded prizes in history, science, literature, politics and journalism, reflecting a long commitment to multidisciplinary approaches to history. His works include Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (1996), Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (2001) and Living with Fire: People, Nature and History in Steels Creek (2012, with Christine Hansen). His book, Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (2007), won the Queensland and NSW Premiers’ awards for Non-Fiction and was the joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. In 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities; in 2014 he was appointed AO for “distinguished service to tertiary education, particularly social, cultural and environmental history, and through popular and academic contributions to Australian literature.”

In recent years, Tom has made the transition from being an ANU academic to being an ADB volunteer as Emeritus Professor. His most recent work has taken a biographical turn. The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft (2016), which won the Ernest Scott Prize for History and the ACT Book of the Year award, is a collection of biographical portraits exploring how 14 prominent Australian historians shaped our understanding of our past. His most recent book on Alice Duncan Kemp, Alice’s Dreaming (2026), has been described as ‘an unforgettable, multi-layered history ... at once biography, literary thriller and stunning evocation of Country and place’ (Mark McKenna). The ADB could not have had a more active or wholehearted leader over the past two decades than Tom Griffiths, who is a most worthy recipient of this award.