Ruby Ekkel
Position: PhD Student
School and/or Centres: School of History
Email: ruby.ekkel@anu.edu.au
Qualification:
Master of Global, Transnational and Spatial History (Distinction), University of St Andrews; Bachelor of Arts (Honours), University of Melbourne
Thesis title: Of beasts, botany and babies: settler Australian women's interactions with native species between 1880 and 1950.
Ruby Ekkel is a PhD candidate at Australian National University and a visiting student at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on changing interactions with Australian native animals, especially as mediated by women. After completing a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) as a Chancellor's Scholar at the University of Melbourne, Ruby achieved a Masters degree at the University of St Andrews. She has also studied at Trinity College Dublin and worked for several years as a resident history and politics tutor at Newman College in Melbourne. She has published and presented on topics spanning animal history, environmental history, and women's history in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Ruby also contributes to public forums including The Conversation, ABC Radio, and the Australian Book Review. She has served as an HDR Representative for the Australian Historical Association Executive, and was a co-editor of the ANU Historical Journal II no. 4.
Women's and gender history; environmental history especially in Australian and colonial contexts; animal history; food history; vegetarian history; transnational and spatial history.
Journal articles:
'Real Men Don’t Kill Koalas: Gender and Conservationism in the Queensland Koala Open Season of 1927', Australian Historical Studies (July): 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2024.2370786.
‘Mimicking lyrebirds in multispecies history’ [short article], Environment and History vol. 30 (2) (7 April 2024): 170-6,
https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903583.
' 'Thrills! And More Thrills!!': The meaning of a bushwalk with the Melbourne Women's Walking Club, 1922-1945', Australian Historical Studies, forthcoming in 2024.
Edited ANU Historical Journal II, no. 4 (November 2023).
‘Vegetarians, vivisection and violationism: gender and the non-human animal in Anna Kingsford’s life and writing’, Lilith, no. 28 (2022): 73-96, doi.org/10.22459/LFHJ.28.04.
‘Woman’s sphere remodelled: a spatial history of the Victorian Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Victoria’, Victorian Historical Journal 91, no. 1 (June 2020): 93-114.
Book reviews:
With Ann McGrath, Ben Silverstein, Mike Jones and Amy Way, ‘Marking Country: Mapping deep histories’, ANU Historical Journal II, no. 4 (November 2023): 161-78.
‘Shady business: the case for leaving forests alone’, Australian Book Review, no. 455 (July 2023): 54, https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/current-issue/991-july-2023-no-455/10410-ruby-ekkel-reviews-the-power-of-trees-how-ancient-forests-can-save-us-if-we-let-them-by-peter-wohlleben-translated-by-jane-billinghurst.
"Idling in Green Places: A Life of Alec Chisholm." Australian Historical Studies, 54(2), pp. 381–382, https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2023.2189071.
Media:
With Simon Farley, 'What I wish I knew as a history postgrad: a selection of guidance from the Australian Historical Association Committee and Beyond', informational booklet for history postgraduates, July 2024.
‘We once killed 600 000 koalas in a year: now they’re Australia’s ‘teddy bears’. What changed?’, The Conversation, 31 January 2024, https://theconversation.com/we-once-killed-600-000-koalas-in-a-year-now-theyre-australias-teddy-bears-what-changed-219609.
Invited interviews on koala open seasons, ABC Canberra and 2CC Talking Canberra, 31 January 2024.
Invited interview on koala conservation, ABC Radio Saturday Breakfast Program, 3 February 2024, https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-saturdaybreakfast/queenslands-open-season-on-koalas-in-1927-and-how-it-changed-pub/103423098.
‘Should we stop eating meat? The case from Victorian England’, Vida: Australian Women's History Network Blog, 1 November 2023, https://www.auswhn.com.au/blog/should-we-stop-eating-meat/.
'Who gives a dam about the Franklin River?', Bush Bash podcast episode, January 2022, https://open.spotify.com/episode/3NXF1nPzuI1NybPOi9Vz4Q.
Gender and Environmental Change: An interdisciplinary symposium (March 2025)
ANU Gender Institute Grants Program
In times of environmental crisis and flux, issues of gender are as deeply consequential as they are frequently overlooked. This two-day symposium aims to elucidate timely questions of gender, sexuality, and women's rights in the light of climate change and environmental destruction, in the past and present. The event brings together higher degree research students, early career researchers and established academics from the broadly conceived environmental humanities, including history, policy, literature, and Indigenous studies, to consider urgent issues at the intersection of gender and environment.
Shortlisted for the Jill Roe Prize, 2024
Ken Inglis Postgraduate Prize, 2023, https://history.cass.anu.edu.au/centres/ceh/news/winner-ken-inglis-prize#:~:text=The%20Ken%20Inglis%20Prize%20is,the%20Australian%20Historical%20Association%20conference.
RSSS Director’s Award for Higher Degree Research, ANU, 2022, https://cass.anu.edu.au/news/philosophy-and-history-scholars-receive-rsss-directors-award
Dean’s List Scholar, University of St Andrews, 2021
Women’s History Network Masters Thesis Prize, Runner Up, 2021
University of St Andrews School of History MLitt Scholarship, 2020-2021
Victorian Community History Award (Best Historical Article), 2020
Top-four Finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, 2020
Dean's List Scholar, University of Melbourne, 2015-16
Chancellor's Scholar at the University of Melbourne, 2015-2018
Victorian Community History Award (Best Historical Article), 2020
Finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, 2020
Dean's List Scholar, University of Melbourne, 2015-16
Ruby has experience in tutoring the following subjects:
HIST2226 Nazi Germany (ANU)
HIST2141 Cold War (ANU)
HIST1007 Medieval War, Plague and Heresy (Newman College)
INTS10001 International Politics (Newman College)
HIST10012 World Since World War Two (Newman College)
Ruby has also delivered individual lectures on conservationism and zoo history, at Charles Darwin University and the University of Cambridge.
