‘Serious and Seemingly Inherent Obstacles to Successful Judicial Biography’ in Writing Sir Gerard Brennan: The Law’s Good Servant
Seminar
Twelve years before I commenced work on a ‘judicial biography’, the US jurist Richard Posner warned that in addition to ‘all the problems of general biography’ the writer of a such a biography also faces other ‘serious and seemingly inherent obstacles,’ including:the impossibility of reliably…
Treating prejudice: Japanese doctors in a white Australia
Seminar
Next year marks the 125th anniversary of the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act and formal establishment of the ‘White Australia policy’. At least one major publication is being prepared to mark this anniversary and review diverse aspects of the stringent restrictions placed on the…
Watering the Forest: Beyond hydraulic developmentalism in the Murray Darling Basin
Seminar
In the early 1980s a new danger faced the Barmah-Millewa Forest, just upstream of Echuca on the border of Victoria and New South Wales. Bordering an 80-kilometre narrow stretch of the Murray River, this forest of river red gums and moira grass had endured decades of unseasonal water flows on…
India’s Eucalyptus Affair: Development, Environmental Management and Politics, c 1960-1990.
Seminar
Between 1960 and 1990, India developed the world’s second largest area of Eucalyptus cover. Today, however, multiple states have banned its planting and state forest departments even uproot mature trees from the roots and replant with native species.Meanwhile, in other countries, this natively…
The historian in the mirror: writing first-person history, and other issues in contemporary historiography
Seminar
Responding to the impulse to provide an account of the birth of what was (probably) Australia’s last new polity – the ACT Legislative Assembly – has presented multiple challenges. The period under review (1989-2001, the first four Legislative Assemblies) ends just 25 years ago, rendering…
From Thesis to Published Book: An Aboriginal historian’s multi-generational family history research and what it revealed about the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people
Seminar
Shauna Bostock’s insatiable curiosity about her family history developed over time to become the focus of her academic research. She traced her four Aboriginal grandparents’ family lines to as far back as she could go in the written historic record, which was during the encroachment of white…
Do Sydney’s disease histories challenge pathogen avoidance theory?
Seminar
For the past two decades there have been various theses and antitheses regarding the idea that the disgust reaction evolved to support pathogen avoidance. Pathogen avoidance theory maintains that human self-preservation is dependent on avoiding, sublimating or destroying microbes. At first glance,…