Menzies Memories
Seminar
This paper will focus on two historical junctures and two sets of sources, concerned with Australians’ construction of collective memory of Robert Menzies (1894-1978; Prime Minister 1939-41, 1949-66). The first part will explore responses to Menzies’ retirement in 1966, focussing on letters written…
A Moving Sense of Place: Cinematic Geographies as Representations of the Korean Past
Lecture/seminar
In reflecting well-received historical understanding and perception, as well as in contributing to an evolving popular discourse about the nation’s past, Korean historical films released over the past quarter-century—the so-called “Korean Wave” period—have done a masterful job of using the country’…
In Conversation with Sita Sargeant
Book launch
A collaboration between the National Centre of Biography and Harry Hartog (ANU)Founder of tour company She Shapes History Sita Sargeant will be in conversation with Michelle Staff about her latest book She Shapes History: Guided Walks and Stories About Great Australian Women (Hardie Grant, 2025),…
The Last Soviet Famine, 1946/47: Mass Death across Ukraine, Moldavia and Russia
Lecture/seminar
This talk explores the last famine in Soviet History, which killed around one million people in 1946/47, especially in Ukraine and Moldavia, but about which we know very little. The Soviet state repressed news of the 1946/47 famine at the time, and it remains understudied in English-language…
Latin America faces the oil shock: South-South engagement during the 1970s Oil Shock
Lecture/seminar
This paper examines the relationship between three Global South actors during the 1970s — Mexico, Venezuela, and Australia — on questions of energy and technology. The paper will present the emergence, development and ultimate failure of a south-south relation during the 1970s, drawing on archival…
Agents of Maoism: Overseas Chinese, Communist Spies, and Radicalism in Cambodia’s Global Sixties
Lecture/seminar
There has been little scholarship on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence operations at home and abroad, and no extant study of the role that Chinese intelligence operations played in spreading Maoism globally. An important site where Maoism took root was Cambodia, where CCP intelligence and…
The making and shaping of an Australian icon: E.E. Dunlop’s heroic reputation
Lecture/seminar
At the time of Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop’s death in 1993, many asked: Why did Dunlop receive all the fame? Why did none of the other forty-three doctors, who were also prisoners of war on the Burma-Thailand railway, receive the same accolades as Dunlop? This pre-submission paper explores the…