SHAPS Digest (March 2025)
The establishment of the Robert Cripps Institute for Cultural Conservation, which will expand upon the pioneering work of the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, was announced this month by the University of Melbourne.
Minsmere Pty Ltd, as a subsidiary of the Cripps Foundation, has donated $15 million to establish the Institute, building upon a $6.9 million donation from the Foundation in 2013. The Cripps family has been a deeply engaged partner of and philanthropic donor to the Grimwade Centre for over 25 years.
The Grimwade Centre is a global leader in cultural materials conservation, research and teaching. This gift will enable the critical next phase of its development and help address increasing challenges to the security of cultural heritage, including the climate crisis and related disasters, global conflicts, mass migration and a dearth of vital conservation expertise.
Sam Baron (Philosophy) published an article in the Conversation, reflecting on philosophical debates about what thoughts are.
Oleg Beyda (History) published a review of Sheila Fitzpatrick‘s latest book, Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War (Princeton University Press), in the Conversation.
Purushottama Bilimoria (Principal Fellow, Philosophy) was interviewed for the Slovenian journal Anthropos: ‘Every Living Thing has a Soul’: Radical Peace, Liberation Struggles and Nonviolence: An Interview with Purushottama Bilimoria‘.
Mark Edele (Hansen Chair in History) commented for the Australian (behind paywall) on the prospects for Trump’s ‘peace deal’ on Ukraine.
Cordelia Fine (HPS) wrote an opinion piece for the Age (behind paywall) on how gender targets won’t help solve workplace gender inequality.
Thea Gardiner (PhD in History, 2025) delivered the inaugural Florence Bartleman lecture, hosted by the PMI Victorian History Library (and named for its first librarian, appointed in 1907). The lecture explored the world of Mab Grimwade. Born into a genteel family of pastoralists and investors in colonial Victoria, Mabel Louise Kelly (1887–1973), or ‘Mab’ to those who knew her, would grow up to make an enormous contribution to Victoria and Australia. Most evidently, it was made through bequests to the University of Melbourne and through the donation to the university of a large, diverse and highly valuable collection of books and artworks. Mab Kelly married Russell Grimwade—chemist, botanist, industrialist and philanthropist—in 1909, and much of her life from that point was publicly defined by her husband’s narrative. While Russell Grimwade left a large private collection including autobiographical papers, letters, and miscellanea that could be accessed by his biographer, Mab preserved very little in the way of personal papers. How do we recover the lives of women who left little documentation? How do we piece together their stories and cultural impact? Using Mab Grimwade as a case study, this talk addresses some of the methodological problems faced by historians writing biographies of women.
The Australian Academy of the Humanities 2024 Hancock Lecture, was delivered by Nathan Gardner (PhD in History, 2022, now a post-doctoral research fellow, Melbourne Law School) on the topic, ‘What Makes a Multicultural Nation? The Contribution of Chinese Australian Communities’.
The lecture considers what ‘Australian multiculturalism’ has been in theory and in fact by tracing the distinctive contributions of Chinese Australian communities and organisations to its origins and evolution: from the time of federation, through the ‘long, slow death’ of the White Australia policy to the eventual turn to multiculturalism and its emerging challenges today. With the ontological boundaries placed around ‘ethnic communities’ by scholarship often being arbitrary or stifling, the lecture also shows how the experiences and interests of Chinese Australian communities have intersected with those of other communities along the way. Through the use of non-English materials, oral histories and community engagement, the lecture is intended to demonstrate how the humanities – and Gardner’s home discipline of history in particular – may better engage with Australia’s multicultural reality and the diverse communities that comprise it. With populist and ethno-nationalist movements gaining traction across the world – not least in democratic nations – Gardner suggests a reconsideration of multiculturalism’s place in ‘building the nation’ is a timely and worthy endeavour.
Kate McGregor (History, and Deputy Associate Dean (International), Faculty of Arts, and Co-Chair of the Global Humanities Alliance) chaired a roundtable discussion on decolonising knowledge. Speakers from four member universities across the eight partner Global Humanities Alliance (GHA) offer diverse global viewpoints on what decolonising knowledge means from different geographical and disciplinary perspectives. The panel features Dr Lynda Ng from the English and Theatre studies program at the University of Melbourne, who shares her thinking on what decolonising knowledge means from an Australian and literary perspective. It also includes contributions by Dr Luqman Nul Hakim from the Department of International Relations at Universitas Gadjah Mada, who reflects on what decolonising knowledge means from an Indonesian and international relations perspective. Dr Nuntamon Kutalad from Museum Studies at Mahidol University offers her thoughts on what decolonising knowledge means from a Thai and museum studies perspective, and Professor Projit Bihari Mukharji from Ashoka University shares his thinking on what decolonising knowledge means from an Indian and history of science perspective. Together, the panellists reflect on what constitutes colonialism in any given context, what decolonisation may involve, hierarchies of knowledge and the potential co-optation of decolonisation. This roundtable is part one of a two-part roundtable series that aims to further the mission of the Global Humanities Alliance to take up global issues and offer diverse global perspectives by bringing scholars and students together for critical conversations.
The Grimwade Centre was featured on Seven News for its cultural conservation and restoration.
James Keating (History) discussed his work on Anglo-Australian artist and suffragist Dora Meeson Coates (1869–1955), her famous ‘Trust the Women Banner’ (now hung in Australia’s Federal Parliament), and his attempt to use rediscovery of her work to think through the politics of Australian suffrage memory.
Marilyn Lake (Professorial Fellow, History) published a review essay (behind paywall), ‘The Carceral State: A Deep History of Migrant Imprisonment’, on Brianna Nofil‘s book The Migrant’s Jail, in Australian Book Review.
Judy McKinty‘s tribute to June Factor AM (1936-2024) was published in the International Journal of Play. This is an extended version of the tribute published last year, and features fascinating details and moving reflections on June’s life, work, and legacy.
Jesse Seeberg-Gordon (PhD candidate, History) discussed his work on Australian foreign policy and the Sino-Soviet split for the Robert Menzies Institute podcast.
Elizabeth Tunstall (PhD in History 2022, now Visiting Research Fellow, University of Adelaide) published an article (behind paywall) in History Today on the response by James VI of Scotland to the English succession issue. In the late 1590s an English Jesuit, Robert Persons, published a pamphlet on the English succession which argued that James VI of Scotland was ineligible to succeed. To counter this threat James embarked on a bold public relations strategy. Over the next few years James wrote, commissioned or ordered printed five separate works to illustrate his right to the English throne.
John S. Wilkins (Honorary Fellow, HPS) published a review of Prosanta Chakrabarty’s book Explaining Life through Evolution, in the Quarterly Review of Biology.
Academic Publications
Purushottama Bilimoria (Principal Fellow, Philosophy), Gereon Kopf and Nathan R. B. Loewen (eds), Engaging Philosophies of Religion: Thinking Across Boundaries (Bloomsbury)
How can philosophy of religion become more diverse in content and method? How can we take a multiplicity of stories into account and teach a truly inclusive philosophy of religion?
It is now openly acknowledged that if we do not change the underlying framework of the way we do philosophy of religion, we will always create subalterns. Here is an invitation to rethink Philosophy of Religion. Engaging with texts and thinkers from multiple traditions, this book offers 18 distinct approaches to doing Philosophy of Religion and presents an opportunity to change Philosophy of Religion at a fundamental level.
Drawing on religions and philosophies from across history and around the world, each chapter outlines a framework for approaching religion from a different standpoint: monotheism in Christianity, Qi in Daoism, embodiment in neuroscience, naturalism in the atheism debates, and non-territorialism in 19th-century debates on cartography.
Contributors identify the many philosophical systems that guide metaphysical and moral truths and adhere to the principle that traditions are not monolithic but diverse. They recognise that categories such as “indigenous religions” are political rather than descriptive in nature.
Helen M. Davies‘ book Herminie and Fanny Pereire: Elite Jewish Women in Nineteenth-Century France (Manchester University Press), was reviewed by Pamela Pilbeam in the journal Modern and Contemporary France. The reviewer writes: ‘This is an excellent successor to Helen Davies’ very favourably-reviewed study of Emile and Isaac Pereire, published by Manchester University Press in 2015. It is based on extensive research into the Archives of the Pereire family, which Davies secured permission to use and has inspired others to consult. The archives include revealing and fascinating private letters between family members. The lives of the mother and daughter illustrate how the position of French women Jews changed during the nineteenth century to give them a growing public influence… This thoroughly researched and well-judged study, which sets out a very complex story clearly, is essential reading for specialists in nineteenth-century European and religious history and a vital and innovative detailed work of reference for anyone interested in the role of French Jews.’
Helen Davies‘ book was also reviewed by Susan Foley for the journal Napoleonica. Susan Foley praised the work as ‘impressive’, and notes that ‘it makes a major contribution to our understanding of the lives of bourgeois women … Davies’ skilful use of intimate sources enables her to construct a subtle picture of daily life and relationships, exposing contributions unseen in the public record.’
Brent Davis (Classics & Archaeology), Investigations into the Language(s) behind Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A, in M. Civitillo, S. Ferrara, and T. Meissner (eds), Cretan Hieroglyphic
Nearly 4000 years ago a hieroglyphic script was used on Crete which predates Linear A and Linear B, indeed any other writing in Europe, but remains undeciphered since its discovery at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is the first comprehensive account of this script, which is analysed by the leading experts through an array of lenses, including archaeology, philology, palaeography, cognitive studies and decipherment theory, in order to showcase its importance in the history of writing. The book takes a broad approach to writing, understanding it not solely or even mainly as a visual tool to convey language, but primarily as a social and cultural phenomenon rooted in agency, materiality, and semiotics.
Paige Donaghy (History) and Cassandra Byrnes, Reproducing History: A Review of the Historiography of Reproduction, Health and History
Over the past decade, the history of reproduction has become its own distinctive category of historiography, with the establishment of dedicated conferences and research groups. This paper aims to explore the rise of this new field of scholarship, which has its origins in the emergence of feminist and women’s history in the late 1970s. Tracing key moments in the historiography, the authors consider current developments and directions in the field, which continue to be motivated by feminist and decolonial activism on reproductive matters. Examining these new subjects of scholarship, the authors discuss the strengths of the field and consider its potential future pathways for research.
Xavier Fowler (PhD in History, 2018), The Football War: The VFA and VFL’s Battle for Supremacy 1930–1949 (Melbourne University Publishing)
In the shadow of the impending Second World War, a battle for control kicked off between two rival factions in Australian Rules football-the powerful upstart Victorian Football League, comprising the strongest inner-city clubs, and the struggling Victorian Football Association, which sought new teams and spectators in Melbourne’s growing outer suburbs. The conflict spilled out of Victoria, inciting division and discord in almost every corner of the country. Woven through Xavier Fowler’s lively history are the stories of iconic players whose lives and careers were fundamentally altered by the conflict as they crisscrossed the breach, including Australian Football Hall of Famers Ron Todd, Laurie Nash, Jack Dyer and Bob Pratt. From bitter personal rivalries to the lasting impacts on the game itself, The Football War is the untold story of the battle for supremacy on- and off-field, and the fight for the soul of Australian Rules.
“Fowler has done his research, and it shows. Some of the detail he has uncovered is eye-opening, to say the least…This chapter in football history has never received the attention it warrants. Xavier Fowler’s book corrects that imbalance, providing us with a far better understanding of what happened and how it still affects the game today.” — Australian Book Review
James Keating (History), ‘Give it to the Mitchell, it would be there for those that come after us’: interwar feminists’ archival activism and the recasting of Australian history’, History Australia Journal
In the 1920s and 1930s, Australian feminists – alongside their counterparts across the world – confronted their omission from collecting institutions as they fought exclusion from the entangled pursuits of history-writing and nation-making. Extending the scholarship on women’s ‘archival activism’, this article details feminists’ heterogenous mnemonic practices by studying how author Miles Franklin and suffragist and pacifist Vida Goldstein created paper trails and considered posterity. Scrutinising both women’s divergent archival strategies and memory networks not only clarifies their decisions about housing their collections in state archives or gender-dedicated institutions but reveals their deliberation over whether the nation constituted a suitable vector for the transmission of feminist knowledge.
This article is an extension of James Keating’s research into feminist memory and national history in Australia, focusing on the author Miles Franklin and suffragist Vida Goldstein’s divergent strategies for ensuring feminists’ papers and memoirs entered collecting institutions or reached wider audiences in Australia and beyond. At the same time, it’s an appreciation for the Mitchell Library in Sydney and the Women’s Library in London, the two repositories that have most shaped his work as a historian.
Pictured below is one of the vignettes from the piece, Miles Franklin en route to Adelaide in 1937 where she ‘rescued’ the political reformer Catherine Helen Spence’s papers and later deposited them in the Mitchell Library, where they reside today.
Thomas J. Keep (PhD candidate, Classics & Archaeology), Madeline M. G. Robinson, Jessie Birkett-Rees, and Jackson Shoobert, An Australian Overview: The Creation and Use of 3D Models in Australian Universities, Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) 2024 Proceedings
This paper examines the current status of 3D modelling of cultural heritage objects in Australian universities, focusing on how these models are being integrated into object-based learning practices. It discusses the different approaches taken by major universities, explores the motivations behind digitisation projects, and considers the benefits and challenges they present. The paper provides an overview of various digitisation techniques and the separate metadata recording practices that have been developed. It argues for the use of digital surrogates in object-based learning and research while also identifying key challenges that are limiting the potential of cultural heritage 3D modelling. These include the ad hoc nature of digitisation projects, inconsistent funding, and a lack of standardisation in data management and metadata practices. The paper emphasises the importance of long-term planning and collaboration both within and between universities to develop skills, standards, and shared resources.
Thomas J Kehoe (Honorary Fellow, History), Andrekos Varnava and Elizabeth Greenhalgh, British Imperial Legacies and Tobacco Power: Interrogating Connections Between Colonial Histories and Corporate Influence Over Modern Tobacco Control Measures, Social History of Medicine
The global tobacco market is tightly connected to twentieth-century imperialism, yet historians have rarely interrogated how imperial legacies hinder modern tobacco control in post-colonial states. While laws and regulations have been effectively implemented in many countries to reduce tobacco-related harms; the influence of ‘Big Tobacco’ over governments and policymakers remains a formidable obstacle. This article examines high-income Cyprus and low-income Sri Lanka to show the obstacles to tobacco control created by shared imperial histories in which tobacco was a key product. We show how British American Tobacco leveraged the channels of British imperial power in the early to mid-20th century to market its products in these colonies, and how the structures it created were maintained through decolonisation, and continue to be exploited by Big Tobacco corporations today. Finally, we argue that this history should inform policymakers’ and tobacco control advocates’ tobacco control activities in post-colonial states.
Grimwade Centre researchers Nasim Koohkesh, Paula Dredge, Sophie Lewincamp, Sadra Zekrgoo, Daryl Howard (ANSTO), and Leila Alhagh, Synchrotron X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy for Characterising Pigments in Seventeenth-century Persian Illuminated Manuscripts, Studies in Conservation
Identifying materials and techniques is an essential aspect of research related to the historical, artistic, and conservation issues in illuminated manuscripts. This study used synchrotron-based scanning X-ray fluorescence microscopy (SXFM) to investigate three seventeenth-century illuminated Persian manuscripts from The University of Melbourne Manuscripts Collection. This non-destructive and high-sensitivity method provided micron-resolution maps of the elements in the study area, which identified the artist’s palette by considering the dominant elements. Distribution of a particular element provided insight into the paint application methods or subsequent intervention in the area. Gold mapping detected genuine gold in the gilded areas and distinguished the application of liquid gold from gold leaf. The study identified lead in bright red and white, copper and zinc in green, arsenic and sulphur in yellow, mercury in red, and calcium and potassium in blue, suggesting the application of red lead, lead white, malachite or verdigris, orpiment, cinnabar, and natural ultramarine. The ultramarine-hued areas in one of the manuscripts also showed high potassium counts that may relate to the processing of the pigment. Elemental mapping also depicted retouching and interference in drawings, as well as trace elements related to processing methods or primary mineral sources.
Iain McIntyre (Honorary Fellow, History), Parching for Principle: Hotel Boycotts in Regional Australia, 1901–20, Labour History
This article serves as the first in-depth study of the nature, dynamics and growth of a set of consumer boycotts in early twentieth-century Australia. Labelled “beer strikes,” these targeted hotels over issues such as the price and quality of alcohol, food and accommodation, as well as the treatment of staff. The article examines how campaigners created and adapted a body of tactics and forms of organisation between 1901 and 1920, to the point where beer strikes became an established and recurring form of contestation. Identifying beer strikes as a primarily regional tactic, it also sheds new light on consumer activism outside of cities. It finds that beer strikes had continuities with other forms of working-class activism: making use of methods of organisation rooted in unions and in labour politics, and drawing on modern adaptions of ideas concerning “fair” prices and rightful compensation for work. It demonstrates that boycotts played a greater role in Australian working-class distributive and consumer struggles than has been previously acknowledged.
Jesse Seeberg-Gordon (PhD candidate, History), ‘The enemy of my enemy? Australia and the Sino-Soviet split, 1959-1964’ in Damien Freeman (ed.), Finding Menzies: A New Generation’s Inspiration for Foreign Affairs, Social Policy and Political Thought (Robert Menzies Institute)
The book chapter explores the Australian-Soviet diplomatic relationship in the context of the Sino-Soviet split in the period of 1959-1964. It examines how the Menzies Government, traditionally known for its staunch anti-communism, cautiously reconsidered its relationship with the Soviet Union in this period. Canberra believed China to represent the greater threat of the two major communist powers, one which neither Canberra nor Moscow could afford to allow to expand unchecked. The paper draws on new diplomatic records from the Department of External Affairs to discuss Canberra’s belief in the need for some form of Australian-Soviet cooperation in this geopolitical sphere and Moscow’s guarded response to this initiative.
The latest issue of Sofia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions has been published. Sofia is edited by Purushottama Bilimoria (Principal Fellow, Philosophy).
Nicole Tse (Grimwade Centre) and Mariah Camille Calanno, Strategies and Climate Hopes for Collection Care and Environments at the National Museum of the Philippines, Scientific Culture
Tropical climates pose higher risks to museum collections and people, if not understood and managed. The higher temperatures and humidities experienced by memory institutions situated in the tropics, has long been a challenge as organisations engage with collection care beyond the universally claimed environmental controls and climate change. This study examines the influence of climate on collections belonging to the National Museum of the Philippines and the interpretation of material changes and collections at risk. Informing the paper is environmental data recorded from 2013 to 2024 from several floors and galleries from the National Museum of Anthropology and National Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the experiential engagement with the collection over the same period, to examine the dynamics of change in urban, tropical climates, the culture of museum care and sovereignty. Micro-organisms are regularly identified signalling high risk to the collections, museum staff, and visitors; and mechanical failure of composite collections. Mechanical systems are intermittently used during the day and off at night, while periods during the pandemic when air conditioning was not in use, is a chance to examine energy consumption, passive climates and whether this is a real option in the tropics. Having the opportunity to experience, rethink and reflect on collections in the tropics, is creating strategies for collection care in hot, humid climates, and more broadly has increasing relevance for collections outside the global south as wider discussions on museum environments and de-centralised goals are being embraced.
Appointments & Awards
Paige Donaghy (History) has been awarded a Molina Fellowship in the History of Medicine, at the Huntington Library, California, for 2025/26. During her fellowship Paige will be researching scientific and cultural knowledge about the placenta and afterbirth in early modern Europe, drawing on the Huntington Library’s incredibly rich holdings related to reproductive biology. By analysing the Collection’s sources, this project intends to investigate two key areas of knowledge about the placenta: scientific and medical knowledge, and female midwifery knowledge.
Hannah Gould (HPS) has been awarded a Wicking Trust grant to support the project, ‘A Dose of Grief: Death Education for Medical Trainees in Support of Ageing Australians.’ This project will develop and pilot a death literacy training program and peer-support network for medical students across Australia. In so doing, the initiative seeks to transform the culture of medicine by helping ageing and dying people, their families, and doctors to face death. The project will be carried out in partnership with Meaningful Ageing Australia; Grief Australia; and the Australian Medical Students’ Association.
Tom Keep (PhD candidate, Classics & Archaeology) has accepted the offer of a graduate internship at the Getty Center in Los Angeles to help them start up a 3D digitisation centre, commencing September 2025.
Georgy Mamedov has been awarded a Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space (RIPSS) PhD Scholarship. Georgy Mamedov is an independent curator, writer and activist. His work has been focused on critical reinterpretation of Soviet socialism in Central Asia and broader post-Soviet space and includes engagement with queer histories, cultures and art of the region. Georgy co-authored and co-edited several books including A Book on Happiness for Young (and not so) LGBT (and not only) People (Bishkek, 2020), the pioneering Russian language collection of feminist and queer science fiction, Utterly Other (Bishkek, 2018); Queer Communism is Ethics (Moscow, 2016); Concepts of the Soviet in Central Asia (Bishkek 2016) and Bishkek Utopian (Bishkek, 2015). Until recently Georgy held the position of assistant professor of film and media arts at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. At Melbourne, he will be working on the research project ‘Towards a Communist Ideal: Marxism and Marxists under Soviet Socialism’. The project aims to investigate productive and intellectually challenging ways of Soviet Marxist philosophers to simultaneously exercise critique of the Soviet socialism and theorise communism as a viable social order alternative to the then present socialist condition.
Tayla Newland (MA candidate, Classics & Archaeology) has been accepted for a PhD in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, with full funding via a Cambridge Trust International Scholarship. Tayla currently serves as President of the Classics and Archaeology Postgraduate Society, as Editor for Kylix Journal, and as a Student Representative. Her PhD project at Cambridge is titled ‘Gender and Ornamentation in Ancient Southern Italy: Embodying Social Mobility and Connectivity from 800-400 BCE.’
Jesse Seeberg-Gordon (PhD candidate, History/RIPSS) has been awarded a grant by the Estonian National Archives under the ‘Preservation of Cultural Heritage of the Estonian Diaspora’ grant program. The grant supports Jesse’s research project, Estonia in the Antipodes: The Estonian Honorary Consul in Sydney, 1919–1940, for which he will travel to Sydney to work with the Estonian Archives in Australia.
A team led by Iryna Skubii (Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies, History) and Yoko Aoshima (Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University) has been awarded a grant under the Hokkaido-Melbourne Joint Research Workshops scheme. This will enable a delegation from Hokkaido to visit Melbourne in December to participate in a workshop on the topic ‘War, Migration, and Identity: Exploring New Agendas for Ukrainian Studies in the Asia-Pacific Region’.
PhD completion
Sharon Shu Hui Wong, Plastics in Archaeology: Identification and Categorisation of Polymer-based Artefacts and Storage Materials in an Archaeological Context (PhD in Cultural Materials Conservation, 2025)
Although there is an increased awareness and interest in the environmental impact of plastics from an archaeological perspective, little is known about their presence in collections. Plastics can be relatively inert or extremely reactive depending on the type of polymer. To understand the collection management issues facing archaeological assemblages that contain plastics, it is essential to first identify what polymers are present. Therefore, the aim of the research was to categorise and identify what polymers are present in archaeological collections and used as storage materials (and their condition). Firstly, a literature review covering the history and development of polymers, their place in society and the environment as well as their presence in archaeology helped to understand how plastics on a whole fit within the material culture of archaeological sites. Responses from industry questionnaires investigated the level of awareness of plastics in archaeological assemblages.
In addition, collection surveys of terrestrial artefacts from Heritage Victoria (HV), Museums Victoria (MV) and Queensland Museum (QM) involved visual examination and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy techniques to determine the categories of artefacts and types of polymers present in an archaeological context. Collection surveys of storage materials from HV, MV, QM and South Australian Museum also involved visual examination and documentation of storage materials to identify key categories and condition. Lastly, the results raised issues pertaining to conservation and collection management which led to an exploration of future research that could be undertaken. Overall, surveys found 63 artefact typologies, containing 37 polymers and 44 storage material categories, exhibiting 25 condition issues. The findings from the research contributes to the academic literature and industry knowledge by being one of the first dissertations to explore how plastic artefacts and storage materials (and condition issues) can be categorised and identified to inform future conservation and collection management.
Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Petronella Nel and Prof. Robyn Sloggett
Other Happenings
His Excellency Mr Vasyl Myroshnychenko, Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Ukraine to Australia, addressed students in the subject Red Empire: The Soviet Union and After (HIST20084), as part of his visit to the University of Melbourne. A report on the Ambassador’s visit will be published shortly.
Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature, Professor Tony Birch, delivered a special interactive lecture in the subject, Migrant Nation: History Culture Identity (HIST20091). Exploring his mixed heritage and multicultural Fitzroy, Tony engagingly read from his historical poem The Eight Truths of Khan — a poem which creatively reworks the colonial archival record.
The following office bearers were elected at the Fellows & Friends of History (SHAPS) Group Annual General Meeting:
- Co-Chair and Treasurer: Tony Ward
- Co-Chair and Secretary: Fay Woodhouse
- Communications Coordinator: Graham Dudley
- Essay Prize Contact: Greg Burgess
SHAPS staff, fellows, students, alumni: if you have news items for the monthly SHAPS digest, email us the details.
Feature image: Panelists at the roundtable on decolonising knowledge, clockwise from top left: Kate McGregor, Israel Holas, Nuntamon Kutalad, Projit Bihari Mukharji, Luqman Nul Hakim, Lynda Ng.