Head of School Professor Frank Bongiorno recently wrote the following article welcoming new staff and recognising the recent achievements of the members of the School.

“We’ve had quite a few new colleagues join us in recent weeks, and I trust you will join me in welcoming them.

Marnie Hughes-Warrington has now formally commenced with the School of History after a period of OSP following her long and distinguished role at the ANU as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic). She will be teaching first-year European History this semester, but is also preparing new courses such as the exciting Big History, to be offered for the first time at 1000-level in Semester 2, 2020 – and she is working on her latest book, exploring scale in history.

Mike Jones joins the Rediscovering the Deep Human Past ARC Laureate Project in a postdoctoral fellowship. Mike is a historian, archivist, and collections consultant, who comes to us from the University of Melbourne, where he completed a PhD and spent more than a decade at the eScholarship Research Centre, working on community-focused projects in a range of areas. Mike will bring to the project enormous expertise and wide experience in the field of digital history and archives.

Kalesha Reed also joins the Deep Human Past ARC Laureate project as part of the College of Arts and Social Sciences Indigenous Traineeship Program. Kalesha will be involved in a range of activities connected with research and data base management, events promotion and organisation, website news preparation, and Indigenous community liaison.

Daniel Oakman, who has taken up the position of University Historian – his task will be to produce a 75^th anniversary ANU History – is now with us in a lectureship for the next couple of years. Daniel will already be known to many of you as a PhD graduate of the ANU in Pacific and Asian History – he produced a major study of the Colombo Plan, later published as a highly successful book – as well as for his senior curatorial roles at the National Museum of Australia and his recent biography of cyclist and politician, Hubert Opperman.

Tania Colwell is not a new colleague, having contributed much to the School’s teaching and research activities for many years, but we are delighted to welcome her as a full-time lecturer for the next eighteen months.

As usual, we have many sessional tutors contributing to teaching – some of whom will be known to you as our students and colleagues, others of whom come from elsewhere within the ANU or beyond. But I welcome as teaching colleagues: Azima Akhmatova, Josh Black, James Brien, Tom Gardner, Phoebe Garrett, Fleur Goldthorpe, Julie Hotchin, Rhianne Grieve, Alasdair McCallum, Josh Newham, Richard Reid, Saskia Roberts, Matt Ryan, Michelle Staff, Miriana Unikowski and Jess Urwin.

We also have a number of visitors: Ho Hee Cho, a doctoral candidate at St Hugh’s Oxford, who is with us until October and working on British-Commonwealth Initiatives in International Medical Cooperation and the Second World War; Kader Konuk, whom many of you will have met at the seminar on Wednesday, who joins us from the Institute for Turkish Studies and Academy in Exile, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Rachel Bright, from Keele University in England, will be with us from 4 August and will also be presenting in our seminar series. She works in the field of modern British imperial history.

I trust that you will make all of our new and visiting colleagues very welcome.

I would also like to draw attention to a few achievements by staff and students:

Laura Rademaker was shortlisted for the Chief Minister's Northern Territory History Book Award for Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a Northern Australian Mission.

Anthony Merlino, one of our undergraduate students and co-editor of the ANU Historical Journal II, won the Public History Prize awarded by the Public Historians’ Association (NSW & ACT) for his Making History essay, ‘Taking Centre Stage - Indigenous Australian Activism and Popular Music in the 1980s’.

Mark Dawson has published Bodies Complexioned: Human Variation and Racism in Early Modern English Culture, c. 1600-1750, with Manchester University Press.
Angela Woollacott has published: Don Dunstan: The Visionary Politician who Changed Australia, with Allen & Unwin.

Alex Roginski and Annemarie McLaren both had their PhDs conferred in the recent ceremony and Fiona Fraser in absentia.

My congratulations to all.

Finally, I would like to congratulate Bruce Scates for the success of the first offering of HIST2206, The Anzac Battlefields and Beyond. This 12cp course, a major new initiative for our School, took 26 students to Gallipoli, London, Belgium and France in a very busy program of learning activities. I congratulate and thank Bruce, as the leader of this study-tour and course, as well as Alex McCosker and Alex McKinnon, who were the field assistants. The planning and logistics were immense, and we are grateful for all of the work that Bruce and his team put into this wonderful venture.”

Professor Frank Bongiorno

Head, School of History