Professor Judith Brett is well-known for her studies of prominent politicians, including Robert Menzies' Forgotten People (1992) which won the 1993 Ernest Scott Prize, the 1993 Victorian Premier's Prize for Australian Studies and shared the 1993 New South Wales Premier's Prize for non-fiction. She is currently writing a biography of Alfred Deakin. Judith has also written a book with Anthony Moran called Ordinary People's Politics in 2006. She said that 'writing about ordinariness in today's political climate is a fraught enterprise. Since John Howard's election and the rise and fall of Pauline Hanson, being ordinary has become a contested political commodity'. Judith will discuss the relationship between ordinariness and prominence.