Emeritus Professor Tom Griffiths
Position: Emeritus Professor
School and/or Centres: School of History
Position: Foundation Director
School and/or Centres: Centre for Environmental History
Email: tom.griffiths@anu.edu.au
Phone: (02) 612 53345
Location: Level 5, RSSS Building, 146 Ellery Crescent
Qualification:
BA (Hons) (Melbourne University) MA (Melbourne University) PhD (Monash University) FAHA (Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities)
Researcher profile: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/griffiths-tr
Website: https://history.cass.anu.edu.au/people/tom-griffiths
Tom Griffiths AO is the W K Hancock Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Chair of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and Director of the Centre for Environmental History at ANU. His research, writing and teaching are in the fields of Australian social, cultural and environmental history, public history, comparative global environmental history, the writing of non-fiction, and the history of Antarctica. His books and essays have won prizes in history, science, literature, politics and journalism including the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, the Ernest Scott Prize for History, the Eureka Science Book Prize, the Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay advancing Public Debate, and the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. He is the author of Beechworth: An Australian Country Town and its Past (1987), Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (1996), Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (2001) and Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (2007). In the summer of 2002/03 he travelled to Antarctica as a Humanities Fellow with the Australian Antarctic Division, and in 2012 he was invited by the Australian Government to join the centennial voyage to Mawson’s Huts in Antarctica. In 2008 he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at the University of Copenhagen and was then appointed by the Vice-Chancellor as Adjunct Professor of Climate Research at Copenhagen (2009-13). In 2012, his co-edited volume (with Marcus Haward), Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System, was joint winner of the Best Tertiary Scholarly Resource in the Australian Educational Publishing Awards. In 2009 his Alfred Deakin prize-money funded a community historical project with people in the Yarra Valley who suffered in the Black Saturday firestorm: two collaborative books and a film have been released, including the book Living with Fire (co-authored with Christine Hansen, 2012). Tom’s most recent book is The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft (Black Inc., 2016), which was awarded the 2017 Ernest Scott Prize and the 2017 ACT Book of the Year Award. In 2014 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for ‘distinguished service to tertiary education, particularly social, cultural and environmental history, and through popular and academic contributions to Australian literature’.
Australian cultural and environmental history; the comparative environmental history of settler societies; the history of Antarctica.
- Griffiths, T 2015, 'Environmental History, Australian Style', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 157-173.
- Griffiths, T 2015, 'A Polar Drama: The Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14', in Martin Thomas (ed.), Expedition into empire: exploratory journeys and the making of the modern world, Routledge, New York, USA and Abingdon, UK, pp. 171-193.
- Griffiths, T 2014, 'Weather and Mind Games', in Ashley Hay (ed.), The Best Australian Science Writing 2014, NewSouth Publishing (an imprint of University of New South Wales Press), Sydney, pp. 50-72.
- Griffiths, T 2014, 'The Beast of the Forest in The Edges of Environmental History: Honouring Jane Carruthers', RCC Perspectives, vol. 1, pp. 37-43.
- Griffiths, T 2014, 'Coming of Age in the Great Acceleration', Australian Book Review, no. November, pp. 8-11.
- Griffiths, T 2013, 'In Antarctica', in Michelle Hetherington (ed.), Glorious Days Australia 1913, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, pp. 15-25.
- Griffiths, T 2013, Debunking Mawson, p. 7.
- Griffiths, T 2013, 'At dusk in the Gevaudan', Australian Book Review, no. September 2013, pp. 41-50.
- Griffiths, T 2013, 'Foreword - The ADB's Story', in Melanie Nolan and Christine Fernon (ed.), The ADB's Story, ANU ePress, Canberra, pp. xi-xii.
- Griffiths, T 2013, 'Commentary on Wallace S Broecker, 'unpleasant Surprises in the Greenhouse?' and JR Petit et al, 'Climate and Atmospheric History'', in L. Robin, S. Sorlin, P. Warde (ed.), The Future of Nature, Yale University Press, Yale, USA, pp. 337-362.
- Griffiths, T 2013, 'Weather and Mind Games: Why can't we talk about climate change?', Griffith Review, vol. 41, no. July, p. 20.
- Griffiths, T 2013, 'Seeing the forest and the trees', in Anna Clark and Paul Ashton (eds) (ed.), Australian History Now, NewSouth Publishing (an imprint of University of New South Wales Press), Sydney, pp. 251-268.
- Griffiths, T 2013, A landmark work of Australian history, p. 9.
- Griffiths, T 2013, 'Australia's Culture of the Ice - Ninth Phillip Law Lecture', The Phillip Law Lectures, Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts, Hobart, pp. 28-46.
- Griffiths, T 2012, The Disturbing logic of Stay or Go, pp. 1-12.
- Griffiths, T 2012, 'The language of catastrophe: Forgetting, blaming and bursting into colour', Griffith Review, vol. 35, p. 13.
- Griffiths, T 2012, 'The AAT and the Evolution of the Australian Nation', Australia's Antarctica - Proceedings of the Symposium to mark 75 years of the Australian Antarctic Territory, ed. J Jabour, M Haward, T Press, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Hobart Australia, pp. 13-22.
- Griffiths, T 2012, 'Looking into the Ice', in Nancy Sever, Caroline Turner and Anthony Oates (ed.), Antarctica Sidney Nolan Jan Senbergs Bea Maddock Jorg Schmeisser Anne Noble Philip Hughes Chris Drury, Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, Australia, pp. 8-11.
- Griffiths, T 2012, 'Cultivating a Conversation', in Keir Wotherspoon and Erik Ropers (ed.), Written into History - Celebrating Fifty Years of the Melbourne Historical Journal, 1961-2011, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, pp. 223-225.
- Griffiths, T 2012, Thus began the Australian occupation of Antarctica - Inside Story, pp. 12-13.
- Hansen, C & Griffiths, T 2012, Living with fire: People, nature and history in Steels Creek, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.
- Griffiths, T 2012, 'We have still not lived long enough', in Irma Gold (ed.), The Invisible Thread: One Hundred Years of Words, Halstead Press, Canberra, pp. 48-52.
- Griffiths, T 2012, Queen of Tides, pp. 1-4.
- Griffiths, T 2011, 'The Writing of A Million Wild Acres', in Eric Rolls (ed.), A Million Wild Acres: 200 Years of Man and an Australian Forest, Hale and Iremonger (an imprint of GHR Press), Australia, pp. xi-xxii.
- Griffiths, T 2011, 'Foreword [Digging up a past]', in John Mulvaney (ed.), Digging up a past, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. vii-xi.
- Griffiths, T & Haward, M 2011, 'Introduction', in Marcus Haward and Tom Griffiths (ed.), Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System: 50 years of influence, UNSW Press, Sydney Australia, pp. 1-8.
- Griffiths, T 2011, 'Sextants North & South', in Kari Herbert and Huw Lewis-Jones (ed.), In search of the South Pole, Conway (an imprint of Anova Books), London, UK, pp. 144-145.
- Griffiths, T 2011, From the ashes, pp. 1-6.
- Griffiths, T & Haward, M, eds, 2011, Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System: 50 years of influence, UNSW Press, Sydney Australia.
- Griffiths, T & Green, G 2011, 'Culture', in Marcus Haward and Tom Griffiths (ed.), Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System: 50 years of influence, UNSW Press, Sydney Australia, pp. 346-353 and 360-372.
- Kawaja, M & Griffiths, T 2011, ''Our great frozen neighbour': Australia and Antarctica before the Treaty, 1880-1945', in Marcus Haward and Tom Griffiths (ed.), Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System: 50 years of influence, UNSW Press, Sydney Australia, pp. 9-25 and 32-47.
- Griffiths, T 2010, 'The Frozen Past', The Wilson Quarterly:surveying the world of ideas, vol. Autumn.
- Griffiths, T 2010, 'Dedication to Eric Rolls', Island, vol. 120, pp. 12-19.
- Griffiths, T 2010, 'We have still not lived long enough: Black Friday and Black Saturday', Humanities Australia, vol. 1, pp. 23-33.
- Griffiths, T 2010, 'The Antarctic Treaty in 1959', in (ed.), Australia and the Antarctic Treaty: Then and Now, University of Tasmania, Hobart Australia, pp. 9-15.
- Griffiths, T 2010, 'Alice Duncan-Kemp (Pinningarra) and the history of the frontier', in Libby Robin, Christopher R. Dickman and Mandy Martin (ed.), Desert channels: the Impulse to Conserve, CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, pp. 25-43.
- Garrett, P, Griffiths, T & Richards, P 2010, Australia and the Antarctic Treaty - Then and Now, University of Tasmania, Hobart Australia.
- Griffiths, T 2010, 'A humanist on thin ice', Griffith Review, vol. 29, pp. 67-117.
- Griffiths, T & Attwood, B 2010, A radical among historians, The Australian Financial Review.
- Griffiths, T 2009, ''An unnatural disaster'? Remembering and forgetting bushfire', History Australia, vol. 6, no. 2, p. 8.
- Attwood, B & Griffiths, T, eds, 2009, Frontier, Race, Nation: Henry Reynolds and Australian History, Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd, North Melbourne.
- Griffiths, T 2009, 'History and the Creative Imagination', History Australia, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 74.1 - 74.16.
- Griffiths, T & Attwood, B 2009, 'Frontier, Race, Nation', in Bain Attwood and Tom Griffiths (ed.), Frontier, Race, Nation: Henry Reynolds and Australian History, Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd, North Melbourne, pp. 3-52.
- Griffiths, T 2009, 'The Poetics and Practicalities of Writing', in Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath (ed.), Writing Histories Imagination and Narration (2nd edition), Monash University ePress, Clayton Victoria, pp. 1.1-1.14.
- Griffiths, T 2009, A miracle of politics and science, Inside Story - Current affairs and culture.
- Griffiths, T 2009, We have still not lived long enough, Inside Story.
- Griffiths, T 2008, 'The Cultural Challenge of Antarctica: the 2007 Stephen-Murray Smith Memorial Lecture', The La Trobe Journal, vol. 82, no. spring 2008, pp. 4-19.
- Griffiths, T 2008, 'Obituary Greg Dening (1931-2008)', History Workshop Journal, vol. 10, pp. 1-5.
- Griffiths, T 2007, 'The Fabric of a Common Humanity', NSW Premier's History Awards 2007, Arts NSW, Sydney, pp. 3-7.
- Griffiths, T 2007, 'Rocking the Cradle: The politics of the deep past in a Rainbow Nation (South Africa)', reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia, vol. 2, no. 1.
- Griffiths, T 2007, Slicing the Silence - Voyaging to Antarctica, UNSW Press, Sydney Australia.
- Griffiths, T 2007, 'Discovering the continent of ice: Antarctica in world history', in Dennis Trewin (ed.), 2007 Year Book Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, pp. 14-24.
- Griffiths, T 2007, 'Edward Snell 1820-1880', in (ed.), Dictionary of Australian Artists Online, Australian Government Publishing Service, Australia.
- Griffiths, T 2006, 'Foreword [Continent of Curiosities: A Journey through Australian Natural History]', in Danielle Clode (ed.), Continent of Curiosities: A Journey through Australian Natural History, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne Australia, pp. vii-ix.
- Griffiths, T & Sherratt, T 2006, 'What if the Northern Rivers had been turned inland?', in Stuart Macintyre & Sean Scalmer (ed.), What if?: Australian history as it might have been, Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Melbourne, Australia, pp. 234-254.
- Griffiths, T 2006, 'Truth and fiction: Judith Wright as historian', Australian Book Review, vol. tba, pp. 25-30.
- Griffiths, T 2006, 'The breath of Antarctica', Tasmanian Historical Studies, vol. 2, pp. 4-14.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Commentary', Australian Book Review, vol. feb 2005, pp. 45-46.
- Sherratt, T, Griffiths, T & Robin, L, eds, 2005, A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra Australia.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Review of Antarctic Challenges', Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. tba, pp. 256-7.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Review of Australian Antarctic Science', Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. tba, pp. 247-49.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Book Review: True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860-1930', Scopus journal not found.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Legend and Lament', Southerly, vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 118-127.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'The roaring forties', in T Sherratt, T Griffiths, L Robin (ed.), A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra Australia, pp. 152-164.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Bushfire', in Andrew Brown-May and Shurlee Swain (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, pp. 103-104.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Collecting Culture', New Norcia Studies, vol. 13, pp. 23-30.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Drought', in Andrew Brown-May and Shurlee Swain (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, p. 217.
- Griffiths, T 2005, 'Foreword [Peopling the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal history in western Central Australia 1850-1980]', in Ingereth Macfarlane (ed.), Peopling the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal history in western Central Australia 1850-1980, Aboriginal History Inc, Canberra, pp. x-xi.
- Griffiths, T 2004, 'Book Review: The Artificial Horizon: Imagining the Blue Mountains', Australian Historical Studies, vol. tba, pp. 416-17.
- Griffiths, T 2004, 'Playing the Professional Australian', Meanjin, vol. 63, no. 3, pp. 166-174.
- Griffiths, T 2004, 'Voyaging South', in Brij V. Lal, Duncan Beard (ed.), Summer Conversations, Pandanus Books, Canberra, pp. 10-35.
- Griffiths, T 2004, The evolution of rights and wrongs.
- Griffiths, T 2004, 'History as Therapy', Australian Book Review, vol. tba, pp. 43-44.
- Griffiths, T 2004, 'Photography', in Brij V. Lal, Duncan Beard (ed.), Summer Conversations, Pandanus Books, Canberra, pp. 38-45.
- Robin, Libby & Griffiths, T 2004, 'Environmental history in Australasia', Environment and History , vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 439-474.
- Griffiths, T 2003, 'The Language of Conflict', in Bain Attwood & S. G. Foster (ed.), Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, Australia, pp. 135-149.
- Griffiths, T 2003, 'The Nature of Culture and the Culture of Nature', in Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White (ed.), Cultural History in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 67-80.
- Griffiths, T 2003, 'The man from Snowy River', Thesis Eleven, vol. 74, pp. 7-20.
- Griffiths, T 2003, 'The Humanities and an Environmentally Sustainable Australia', The Humanities and Australia's National Research Priorities, pp. 13-20.
- Griffiths, T 2003, 'Cooper Dreaming', in Mark Tredinnick (ed.), A Place on Earth An anthology of nature writing from Australia & North America, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 81-91.
- Griffiths, T 2003, 'Light Green, Dark Green', in D. Gare, G. Bolton, S. Macintyre and T. Stannage (ed.), The Fuss that Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey, Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Carlton, Victoria, p. 217.
- Griffiths, T & Bonyhady, T, eds, 2002, Words for Country: Landscape and Language in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney.
- Griffiths, T 2002, 'Professor Dening's Exercises', Dialogue (Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia), vol. 21, pp. 25-29.
- Griffiths, T 2002, 'Stretton, Leonard Edward Bishop (1893 - 1967)', Australian Dictionary of Biography (Online), vol. 16, pp. 336-337.
- Griffiths, T 2002, 'The Outside Country', in Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths (ed.), Words for Country: landscape and language in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 222-244.
- Griffiths, T 2002, 'Judge Strettons Fires of Conscience', Gippsland Heritage Journal, vol. 26, pp. 9-18.
- Griffiths, T 2002, 'Francis Ratcliffe and changing ecological visions', in Denis Saunders, David Spratt & Monica van Wensveen (ed.), Perspectives on Wildlife Research - Celebrating 50 years of CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology, Surrey Beatty & Sons, Sydney Australia, pp. 132-140.
- Griffiths, T 2002, 'How many trees make a forest ? Cultural debates about vegetation change in Australia', Australian Journal of Botany, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 375-389.
- Griffiths, T & Bonyhady, T 2002, 'Landscape and Language in Australia', in Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths (ed.), Words for Country: landscape and language in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 1-13.
- Griffiths, T 2002, Race around the laboratory, Sydney Morning Herald.
- Griffiths, T 2001, 'The writing of A Million Wild Acres', in John Dargavel, Diane Hart and Brenda Libbis (ed.), Perfumed Pineries Environmental history of Australia's Callitris forests, Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 184-195.
- Griffiths, T 2001, 'The Gallery of Life', Meanjin, vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 85-92.
- Griffiths, T 2001, 'One Hundred Years of Environmental Crisis', The Rangeland Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 5-14.
- Griffiths, T & Platt, A 2001, 'Edward Snell: Sketching a Fortune', in McCalman, I., Cook, A. and Reeves, A. (ed.), Gold: Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 285-298.
- Griffiths, T 2001, 'Tuscan Dreaming', in D. A. Low (ed.), Keith Hancock: the legacies of an historian, Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Melbourne, pp. 237-248.
- Griffiths, T 2001, Forests of Ash: An Environmental History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
- Griffiths, T 2001, 'Flying Fox and Drifting Sand: Going with the Flow', in Halligan, Marion (ed.), Storykeepers, Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, Australia, pp. 145-174.
- Griffiths, T 2001, 'Deep Time and Australian History', History Today, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 20-25.
- Griffiths, T 2001, Inflows: The Channel Country, Goanna Print, Canberra.
- Griffiths, T 2000, 'Travelling in Deep Time: La Longue Dur�e in Australian History', Australian Humanities Review, vol. n/a, no. June-August, p. 1.
- Griffiths, T 2000, 'Essaying the Truth', Meanjin, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 128-144.
- Griffiths, T 2000, 'Social History and Deep Time', Public History Review, vol. 8, pp. 8-26.
- Griffiths, T 1999, Watersheds: The paroo to the Warrego, Goanna Print, Canberra.
Current Research Projects:
- Antarctic history and policy: An ARC funded investigation into fifty years of Australian engagement in the Antarctic Treaty System
- Victorian Bushfire Research Project: A collaborative community response to Back Saturday
- Climate and Culture in Australia: Historical research into the history of weather and climate
- The International IHOPE Project: The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth
- Desert Channels: The Impulse to Conserve: An exploration of the understandings of the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland
- Australian Environmental Historiography: Research into the distinctive character of Australian environmental historiography and nature writing. For further details, visit http://ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org/
Supervision of doctoral candidates in the School of History (Australian National University)
National Environmental History PhD Workshop
History@ANU Postgraduate Workshops
Masterclasses in Environmental History and Non-Fiction Writing
Honours courses in Environmental History and Public History
Adjunct Professor of Climate Research (University of Copenhagen)
