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,…
What’s in a name? The inoculation of smallpox in early eighteenth-century Britain
Seminar
This paper questions the established narrative concerning the introduction of inoculation to Georgian Britain. Its arrival is typically attributed to the account of Turkish practice by Emanuel Timoni, which first appeared in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions (June 1714), and the…
Matthew Flinders: British Spy or the Victim of an unfortunate Chain of Events? Shedding light on the explorer’s imprisonment on Mauritius (1803-1810) and its disastrous consequences
Seminar
Over 221 years ago, on 15 December 1803, having no charts of Mauritius and only information gleaned from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (lent by Sir Joseph Banks), Captain Matthew Flinders put in at Baie du Cap in the French colony of Mauritius, unaware that war had broken out between France and…
Roundtable discussion: The End of Deep History? Where have we been and where to now?
Seminar
This Roundtable brings together key researchers who shaped the seven-year ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Program ‘Rediscovering the Deep Human Past: Global Networks, Future Opportunities’ at the Research Centre for Deep History led by Professor Ann McGrath AM. Defying our interest in critiquing…
The End of Deep History? Reflections on the Laureate Program and its Research Centre
Symposium
This Symposium marks the end of the Research Centre for Deep History and the seven-year ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Program ‘Rediscovering the Deep Human Past: Global Networks, Future Opportunities’, led by Professor Ann McGrath AM and a talented team based at the Australian National…