SHAPS Digest (October 2024)

Liam Byrne (Honorary Fellow, History) published an article looking back at John Curtin’s time as Prime Minister.

Nicole Davis (Honorary Fellow, History) was interviewed on 3AW Melbourne about the new book The Story of Melbourne’s Lanes, co-authored by Weston Bate, Richard Broome, Andy May and Helen Stitt and launched this month (see further below).

Andy May (History) was interviewed about the book on 3RRR:

and on ABC Radio Melbourne:

The HPS Podcast team published several new episodes:

• Simon Schaffer (Cambridge), ‘Leviathan and the Air-Pump: 40 Years Later‘ (Part II)
• Darrin Durant (HPS, SHAPS), ‘Expertise‘
• Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh), ‘Experimental Philosophy‘ (with guest presenter Thomas Spiteri)
• Jen Martin (BioSciences, Unimelb), ‘Communicating Science‘

Molly Mckew (PhD in History, 2019) published an article, ‘Lesbian Music History: Searching for my Mum’s Long-lost Record from 1993′, in Archer Magazine.

Konstantine Panegyres (McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow Classics & Archaeology) published an article on ancient Greek and Roman thinking on environmental issues.

Iryna Skubii (Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies) was interviewed (in Ukrainian) by SBS on her research into the history of the sunflower and how it has become a symbol of Ukraine.

Graham Willett (Honorary Fellow, History) moderated a discussion at the PMI Victorian History Library on the topic ‘Subcultures of Friendship: Male Homosexual Lives in Mid-20th Century Victoria’.

Academic Publications

Liam Byrne (Honorary Fellow, History), No Power Greater: A History of Union Action in Australia (Melbourne University Press, forthcoming May 2025)

Unions are making a comeback. Labour disputes around the world have hit the headlines as unions take action to challenge inequality. But while media coverage has increased, understanding of unions has not. In this lively history of Australian unionism Liam Byrne seeks to illuminate what unionism means, exploring why successive generations of working people organised unions and nurtured them for future generations. Foregrounding the pioneering efforts of women workers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers, culturally and linguistically diverse workers, and LGBTIQA+ workers as central to the union story today, Byrne uses case studies of worker action and struggle to better understand the lived reality of unionism, its challenges, and its contribution to Australian life. No Power Greater is the compelling story of the acts of rebellion and solidarity that have shaped Australia’s past and shows that unions are far from history.

Heather Dalton (Honorary Fellow, History) (ed.), The Ledger of Thomas Howell 1522–1528, Draper of London and Merchant of Bristol and Seville (Bristol Record Society, 2024)

‘The Ledger of Thomas Howell’ is a velum-bound account ledger preserved by the Drapers’ Company in Drapers’ Hall in the City of London. Covering transactions for the years 1517 to 1528, the ledger provides the earliest known example of an English merchant using double entry accounting. This first, complete transcription by John H. Brierley (2024-2008), introduced and edited by Heather Dalton, provides a unique opportunity to enter the world of a successful draper and cloth merchant. Thomas Howell (c. 1480-1537), who was born in Bristol, lived between London and Seville before spending his last decade in the Andalusian port. Entries in his ledger detail how he made a fortune exporting woollen cloth and other supplies to Spain and Castile’s Atlantic settlements, while importing sugar, wine, and soap into England. The entries also reveal the extensive, international network of producers, traders, and mariners who made Thomas Howell’s commercial activities possible. These activities enabled Howell to make a substantial bequest to the Drapers, which continues to support education in Wales today through Thomas Howell’s Trust and Education Fund For North Wales.

Nicole Davis (PhD in History, 2023, and Honorary Fellow in History) and Andrew J May (History), with Weston Bate, Richard Broome and Helen Stitt, The Story of Melbourne’s Lanes: Essential but Unplanned (Royal Historical Society of Victoria/State Library of Victoria, 2024)

Melbourne started as an ideal colonial grid of city blocks – at once dextrous but invasive – overlaid onto the undulating landscape of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples. It was then voraciously cut, sliced, sometimes reformed, then sliced and sliced again. As historian Weston Bate described in the first iteration of this book in 1994, an “essential but unplanned” network of tiny streets, by necessity, was inserted to service in the most practical sense the workings of these narrow slivers of land that required light, air, servicing and delivery from behind or from the side. That functional ‘back’ story is what lends special nuance to Melbourne’s lanes and their subsequent and alternately seamy or gleaming histories: of crime, prostitution and opium dens, as implicit racial ghettoes, of hidden pearls containing elegant arcades, and, more recently, the institutionalised resurgence of Melbourne’s lanes as prized urban spaces, now touted as models of what the word ‘urban’ might mean in an Australian setting. (From the Foreword by Philip Goad)

This book expands on Weston Bate’s popular out-of-print book Essential but Unplanned: The Story of Melbourne’s Lanes (1994). The new book (280 pages) more than doubles the size of the old with extra chapters to bring the story of Melbourne’s lanes up-to-date. There is a multitude of new photos – both contemporary and historical, both colour and black-and-white and more comprehensive indices.

Peter McPhee (Emeritus Professor, History), An Environmental History of France: Making the Landscape, 1770–2020 (Bloomsbury, 2024)

The French countryside is as beloved by the many millions of tourists who visit it each year as it is of French people themselves. But it has not always looked like it does today. An Environmental History of France instead presents the countryside in which people live and work and through which they travel as a human creation across 250 years of economic and cultural change, war and revolution. It is a book about the ‘making’ of the French landscape and an engrossing story linking human geography, history, agriculture and culture.

Showing an awareness of the origins and nature of current ecological and social challenges, Peter McPhee uses a blend of environmental and cultural approaches to paint a vivid picture of rural France’s modern history. From the aristocratic control of agrarian resources in the 1770s, to widespread mechanisation in the 19th century, through to the impact of the World Wars and an intriguing discussion about the uncertain future of French rural communities, McPhee provides a nuanced, detailed and absorbing account of a distinctive version of France that is essential to the country’s identity.

Sam Baron (Philosophy), Platonism and Intra-Mathematical Explanation, The Philosophical Quarterly

This article introduces an argument for Platonism based on intra-mathematical explanation: the explanation of one mathematical fact by another. The argument is important for two reasons. First, if the argument succeeds then it provides a basis for Platonism that does not proceed via standard indispensability considerations. Second, if the argument fails, it can only do so for one of the three reasons: either because there are no intra-mathematical explanations, or because not all explanations are backed by dependence relations, or because some form of noneism—the view according to which non-existent entities possess properties and stand in relations—is true. The argument thus forces a choice between nominalism without noneism, intra-mathematical explanation, and a backing conception of explanation. You can have any two, but not all three.

Alex Cain (Philosophy), Political Friendship, Respect, Community: Hannah Arendt’s De-Materialization of Aristotelian Political Friendship, Philosophy and Social Criticism

This article demonstrates how Hannah Arendt both appropriates and transforms Aristotle’s view of political friendship. It argues that the brief discussion of Aristotelian political friendship in The Human Condition relies on an earlier de-materialization of Aristotle’s work on friendship. This de-materialization of Aristotle’s view of friendship allows Arendt to discuss Aristotelian friendship as a kind of ‘respect’, where ‘respect’ is a philosophical notion unavailable to Aristotle. Ultimately, for Arendt, the experience of friendship opens up a space for human beings to begin to practice a distinct way of seeing one another – a ‘respect’ – that can in turn be practiced in public, making the experience of friendship an important precursor to action.

Nicole Davis, with Julie McLeod and Kate O’Connor, The Ethics of Archiving and Sharing Qualitative Data, in Bruce M Smyth, Michael A Martin & Mandy Downing (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Human Research Ethics and Integrity in Australia (Routledge) 

There is growing interest in archiving qualitative research data for the purposes of sharing and making it more widely available for use and re-analysis by other scholars, research end-users, and the wider public. While the re-analysis of any type of data raises ethical and methodological issues, there are distinctive questions for qualitative research that derive from the purpose and specificity of data, participant consent, and the aims of re-use. Qualitative data are appreciably different to quantitative data in terms of methods for generating material, the relative salience of the context in which data are produced, and the particular requirements for secure storage and access—particularly when maintaining sensitive data and any requirements to protect the identity of research participants and other stakeholders. This chapter addresses the ethical dimensions of archiving and re-using qualitative data, focusing in particular on (a) the practical decisions involved in project design and management, (b) current data governance considerations, and (c) examples of how some of the more practical or technical aspects of ethical research design and conduct might be navigated. It draws on our experiences of archiving qualitative research projects in the Studies of Childhood, Education and Youth (SOCEY) Repository, housed at the Australian Data Archive.

Simon Farley (History), “The Menace of Acclimatization“: The Advent of ‘Anekeitaxonomy”‘ in Australia, Historical Records of Australian Science

Acclimatisation has been a profoundly important force in Australia’s history, yet scholars have routinely ignored or denigrated it, leaving it under-studied and misunderstood. Most accounts frame acclimatisation as a fad, briefly flourishing around the 1860s; scholars typically blame the spread of animal pests such as the rabbit for the sudden loss of interest in this branch of science. This article attempts to revise such accounts, demonstrating, on the contrary, that settler Australians continued to exhibit favourable attitudes towards acclimatisation and acclimatised wildlife well into the twentieth century. Focusing on wild birds, the article argues that acclimatisation was not consistently opposed by Australian naturalists until the second half of the 1930s, and indeed, that attempts to acclimatise non-native birds continued into the 1960s. Settler nationalism and xenophobia – rather than improved ecological theories or field data – are identified as the underlying motivation for the opponents of acclimatisation. The implications for present-day research into and management of non-native wildlife species are briefly considered.

Fiona Fidler (History & Philosophy of Science) with D. G. Hamilton, M. J. Page, S. Everitt and H. Fraser, Cancer Researchers’ Experiences with and Perceptions of Research Data Sharing: Results of a Cross-Sectional Survey, Accountability in Research: Ethics Integrity and Policy

Despite wide recognition of the benefits of sharing research data, public availability rates have not increased substantially in oncology or medicine more broadly over the last decade. We surveyed 285 cancer researchers to determine their prior experience with sharing data and views on known drivers and inhibitors. We found that 45% of respondents had shared some data from their most recent empirical publication, with respondents who typically studied non-human research participants, or routinely worked with human genomic data, more likely to share than those who did not. A third of respondents added that they had previously shared data privately, with 74% indicating that doing so had also led to authorship opportunities or future collaborations for them. Journal and funder policies were reported to be the biggest general drivers toward sharing, whereas commercial interests, agreements with industrial sponsors and institutional policies were the biggest prohibitors. We show that researchers’ decisions about whether to share data are also likely to be influenced by participants’ desires. Our survey suggests that increased promotion and support by research institutions, alongside greater championing of data sharing by journals and funders, may motivate more researchers in oncology to share their data.

Jacinthe Flore (History & Philosophy of Science) et al., A Qualitative Study of Work and Early Menopause: ‘On-the-job’ Experiences and Career Trajectories, Maturitas

Early menopause or premature ovarian insufficiency (POI), menopause occurring before age 45 and 40 years respectively, occur at the age when most women are establishing or consolidating their careers. Studies of older postmenopausal women indicate an adverse bidirectional relationship between menopause and work. However, data are lacking regarding the work experiences of women with early menopause or POI. We explored the experiences of women with early menopause or POI in relation to work.

Using maximum variation sampling, 30 women (median age 44 years and 38 years at menopause diagnosis) of diverse backgrounds and menopause causes (16/30 iatrogenic) participated in qualitative interviews to explore experiences of early menopause/POI in the context of their overall lives, work and career. Dual thematic (themes identified across interviews) and thematic narrative (themes identified within individual interviews) analysis was done using NVivo 12 software.

Two major themes were identified: ‘on-the-job’ experiences (work performance, bodily presentation and disclosure) and career trajectories (intact and altered). Factors impacting the interaction between work and early menopause/POI included: career (type of work, environment, working conditions), personal (age, socio-economic background, family arrangements, migration history) and menopause experience (spontaneous versus iatrogenic, treatment complexity).

Early menopause/POI has multiple impacts on women’s work experiences and career trajectories. As with older postmenopausal women, career and personal factors influence younger women’s work experience. However, this research highlights differences associated with menopause occurring at an earlier, often unexpected age compared with menopause at the usual age.

James Keating (History), entry on Melbourne actor and activist Phyl Ophel (1907–2000), Australian Dictionary of Biography

This piece – published online ahead of the release of volume 20 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography – is a biography of the actor, writer, and long-term Port Phillip resident Kathleen (Phyl) Ophel. It traces her career as an artist and Communist activist from her formative years among Perth’s Workers’ Art Guild in the 1930s, housing advocacy during her six years in Melbourne’s notorious ‘Camp Pell’, and life among Melbourne’s literary and theatrical circles into the 1990s.

Graham Priest, Social Atomism and Its Problems – Metaphysical and Political, Filozofia

Social atomism is a view that informs much contemporary social thinking. Drawing on arguments from Marxism and Buddhism, this article argues that it is false, and explores the consequences of this for a number of issues, notably those related to the ideology of capitalism.

A number of SHAPS staff contributed to the latest issue of Agora, the journal of the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria:

• James Keating (History), Beginning a New Century of Women’s Suffrage History? 

New scholarship is documenting the suffragists’ place in Australia’s commemorative landscapes, the promise and partiality of digital archives, and reconsidering the voting restrictions that complicate narratives of ‘universal’ suffrage in the twentieth century.

• Patrick McGrath (History), Was the American Revolution a Civil War? 

The intense partisanship of America’s current political culture has led historians to question the traditional conception of the revolution as a unifying event guided by a common ideology or shared enemy.

• Peter McPhee (Emeritus Professor, History), New Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences of the French Revolution 

The past decade has seen further evidence of the ways in which the French Revolution continues to inspire research and reinterpretation, particularly on the consequences of 1789.

• Pete Millwood (History), China’s Foreign Emergence under Mao 

A new wave of historiography is identifying Mao’s final years as the period when China retreated from the isolation of the Cultural Revolution and began opening up to the capitalist West.

• Frederik Vervaet (Classics & Archaeology), Reform Aversion and the Death of the Roman Republic 

The demise of the Roman Republic arguably fits the circumstances identified in recent scholarship examining how democracies can be taken over by authoritarians.

• Natasha Wilson (History), Teaching the Russian Revolution in Times of War 

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has encouraged historians to explore non-Russian archives, amplifying the voices and experiences at the peripheries of the Russian Revolution.

PhD Completions

Catherine Gay (PhD in History, 2024), Girls in Nineteenth-Century Victoria, Australia: A Material History

This thesis explores the lives of Aboriginal and settler girls who lived in nineteenth-century Victoria. From the Port Phillip District’s invasion in 1835 to its federation into the Australian Commonwealth in 1901, Catherine Gay traces girls from infancy to their late teen years as they grew up in the colony. Despite being a major proportion of the population and participants in significant historical events and processes, girls have been overlooked in Australian historiography. The thesis argues that, both as individuals and as a collective, Aboriginal and settler girls in Victoria contributed significantly to their families, communities, society and culture, whilst influencing, subverting and defying the expectations these structures placed upon them. It examines both what it meant to be a girl and how girls enacted their own girlhoods. It explores how race, ethnicity, class, religion, location and other intersectional factors combined with gender and age to produce myriad experiences for the young and female. The study uses girls’ material culture, what the author terms ‘girl-produced sources’, to uncover their overlooked stories. Each chapter demonstrates that sources like girls’ needlework, craft, writing or performance, can provide rich insights into diverse experiences and themes in girls’ lives, namely migration, work, First Nations activism, schooling, public life, sisterhood, and play.

By centring girls as historical subjects and prioritising their material culture as a primary source, this thesis offers a new perspective on Australia’s colonial history. It complicates, challenges and enriches a historiography that has historically privileged the voices and experiences of adults.

This project was generously supported by a Hansen PhD Scholarship.

Supervisors: Prof. Andy May, Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy, Dr Deborah Tout-Smith (Museums Victoria)

Other happenings

SHAPS staff, fellows, students, alumni: if you have news items for the monthly SHAPS digest, email us the details.

^{Feature image: Dr Gerhard Wiesenfeldt, Susan Lengyel and Dr Kate Lynch, at ‘Demystifying the Inevitable – Let’s Talk about Death’, University House}