SHAPS Digest (April 2025)
Rustam Alexander (PhD in History, 2018) published an article in the Insider on the history of the trans rights struggle and the rise of transphobia in the US.
Charles Coppel (Principal Fellow, History) delivered a talk to the Australian Jewish Historical Society, ‘Berrick Family Origins: Liverpool and Beyond’.
Mark Edele (Hansen Chair in History) outlined a scenario for a democratic future for Ukraine, in the Lowy Institute’s online publication, The Interpreter.
Cordelia Fine (HPS) discussed her new book, Patriarchy Inc., in Pursuit, exploring why women still have less status and power over resources than men.
Jonathan Kemp (Cultural Materials Conservation) published an article in Pursuit about the Grimwade Centre’s work repairing damage to a sculpture by Aṉangu artist Reggie Uluru.
Public Record Office Victoria and the Melbourne History Workshop team produced a digital collaboration, focussing on music-related industries in Melbourne from around the middle of the nineteenth century to the 1930s.
John Wilkins (Honorary Fellow, HPS) published an article on category mistakes in scientific metaphysics.
Awards & Appointments
Isabelle Moss has been awarded the Hansen PhD scholarship in History. Isabelle’s research explores witchcraft in early modern Germany and traces how demonic copulation was understood in popular culture. It uses popular printed material, including broadsheets and pamphlets, to trace how these popular understandings were constructed, transformed, and eventually disseminated across time and place.
The Hansen Trust, established to advance the study of History at University of Melbourne, includes an annual PhD scholarship to the doctoral program in History in SHAPS. A key feature of the Hansen PhD scholarship is a mentoring program that provides valuable experience in tertiary teaching and the promotion of History to the community.
The following postgraduate researchers have been appointed as SHAPS Forum writers for 2025:
- Madeline Helyar (Philosophy)
- Kathryn Laurentis (HPS)
- Ruby Mackle (Classics & Archaeology)
- Jesse Seeberg-Gordon (History)
- Sharon Wong (Cultural Materials Conservation)
Academic Publications
Oleg Beyda‘s book, For Russia with Hitler was reviewed by Maria Lipman for Foreign Affairs.
Tony Ward (Honorary Fellow, History), “The Impact of News Corporation Scepticism on the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study from Victoria, June-August 2020,” in Shirley Leitch and Sally Wheeler (eds), Because COVID… Pandemic Responses, Rationales and Ruses (ANU Press, 2025).
On 2 August 2020, Premier of Victoria Dan Andrews announced a state of disaster to tackle a second wave of COVID-19. Tough lockdown measures included nightly curfews, work and study from home directives, and one-hour limits on leaving homes each day. News Corporation media outlets were prominent among those ‘not taking this seriously’, as Dan Andrews put it. Typically, widely read columnist Andrew Bolt responded to the government restrictions by urging, on 4 August, ‘Victoria, don’t accept this!’
This chapter analyses the impact of News Corporation scepticism through a case study of the Australian state of Victoria. Victoria suffered a ‘second wave’ of the virus from late June into July 2020, leading to the state of disaster announcement. The chapter estimates that News Corporation’s scepticism materially worsened this second wave of the virus.
PhD Completions
David Feeney (PhD in Classics & Archaeology, 2025), ‘The Carthaginian Empire in the Iberian Peninsula, 237–219 BC‘
Concerning the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean basin, Polybius observed (4.28.3) that “the circumstances of Italy, Greece, and Asia were such that the beginnings of these wars were particular to each country, while their ends were common to all these conflicts came into connection with each other and began to tend towards one end.” The Second Punic War first brought the Iberian Peninsula into the orbit and imagination of the Romans. The Carthaginians, in contrast, were intimately familiar with the Iberian Peninsula from the ninth century BC.
The earliest Phoenician seafarers reached southern Iberia in at least the ninth century BC, and thereafter Phoenician settlers, seafarers and traders intensively interacted with the native inhabitants there. By the third-century BC several Phoenician colonies in Iberia had emerged as significant city-states. Greek and Roman sources typically diminish the impact of the Phoenician/Punic civilization upon the ancient world of the Mediterranean, but the evidence is that throughout Iberia they were of profound importance. This Phoenician and (after c. 550 BC) Punic presence in Iberia was critical in shaping the cultural and political terrain upon which the Carthaginians commenced their imperialist conquests in 237 BC.
Between 237-219 BC the city-state of Carthage established an empire across southern Iberia through ruthless military conquest. This imperialist project provided Carthage with enormous mineral and agricultural wealth, tribute and war-booty, as well as fresh reserves of capable military manpower and valuable military experience. The Carthaginian empire in Iberia was comprised of a variegated patchwork of Punic city-states, native subjects, native allies and new foundations, the most significant being New Carthage. This dissertation describes how this Carthaginian empire was formed, over whom it ruled, and how it was administered and maintained.
This dissertation relies upon a fusion of the available evidence, including archaeology and a re-assessment of the literary sources. Surviving Greek and Roman sources often betray an ignorance of the geography and inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, transmitting errors and exaggerations and a bewildering plethora of ethnonyms. A significant amount of archaeological work has been undertaken in Spain and Portugal in recent decades, which is as diverse as field surveys and the analysis of settlement patterns, study of the provenance, contents and distribution of amphora, excavation of sites, numismatic studies, the study of ancient hispanic languages and epigraphy’s, and the use of Thiessen polygons to approximate territories. This wealth of material has had limited success in penetrating the English-speaking scholarly world.
Although little understood, the Carthaginian empire in Iberia is of the greatest historical importance. The expansion of Carthaginian power in Iberia triggered the outbreak of the Second Punic War. It was from Iberia that Hannibal launched his famous invasion of Italy in 218 BC. Iberia was a critical theatre of conflict in the Second Punic War, and the final defeat of Carthage there in 206 BC presaged the final defeat of Carthage itself. Rome inherited much of the Carthaginian empire in Iberia, and the Carthaginian foundations upon which Rome built significantly shaped the Romanization of Hispania.
Supervisors: Prof. Frederik Vervaet, Assoc. Prof. Gijs Tol
Laura Pisanu (PhD in Classics & Archaeology, 2025), ‘Social Complexity and Maritime Connectivity in Nuragic Sardinia: The South Montiferru and the North Campidano’
This thesis investigates Nuragic social organisation and the management of power based on a detailed archaeological investigation of a case-study area, the south Montiferru and north Campidano, and discusses Nuragic Sardinia’s involvement in the maritime trade. Data collected from the research area during fieldwork activities have been studied through typological comparisons and GIS-based analyses (Viewshed and Least Cost) to understand how the organisation of Nuragic communities changed from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. Subsequently, data on Bronze Age and Iron Age maritime trade, which have been collected during period of overseas research in Tuscany, Sicily, and Greece, are critically reassessed.
From the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age (16th – 10th century BC), the human occupation of Sardinia (Italy) is known to have been part of the Nuragic civilization, whose name comes from the nuraghi (stone towers). The abundance of available building materials enabled Nuragic groups to construct simple and complex nuraghi, settlements and collective tombs across the whole island. All these monuments resulted in the organisation of a specific geographic, social, and cultural milieu whose architectural expressions and symbolic values have traditionally been related to hierarchical organisations of groups living around Sardinia.
Nuragic communities were involved in maritime exchanges and interactions with overseas societies, especially those on other islands, such as Lipari, Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus. While Nuragic groups seem to have played a secondary role in the Mediterranean trade network during the early stages of the Bronze Age, their involvement in the exchange of metals during the period between the Final Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age appears to have become more prominent.
In the end, Nuragic communities are described as heterarchically organised in egalitarian tribes during the Bronze Age. Social organisation of Nuragic people influenced and was influenced by maritime connectivity leading to different degrees of mobility and engagement with Mediterranean communities through circuits of trade. Finally, a more intense maritime connectivity led to the development of Nuragic tribes into more complex heterarchical societies with the emergence of warrior groups during the Iron Age.
Supervisors: Dr Lieve Donnellan, Assoc. Prof. Gijs Tol
Shan Windscript (PhD in History, 2025), Making the ‘Modern Socialist Self’: Writing a Diary in the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Writing a diary was a widespread activity in China during the Cultural Revolution and thousands of diaries from that period survive today in libraries and private collections. Most of these personal documents, however, remain unexplored due to the assumption that, under the Communist regime, the diary fell victim to state ideological monopoly. What was once part of a flourishing culture of Maoist autobiographical self-fashioning has until now been treated largely as evidence for the totalitarian destruction of the “private self.” Drawing on extensive archives of unpublished diaries from the period as well as contemporaneous interviews with former diarists, this thesis provides the first scholarly attempt to explore the cultural-historical significance of diary-writing in the production of modern and socialist subjectivities in Maoist China. Employing post-structuralist, deconstructive, and historical approaches, Shan Windscript treats the revolutionary diary not simply as a medium of life-recording, but as a volatile genre of everyday political self-subjectivation—one that both enabled the articulation of socialist subjectivities while amplifying the aporias at the core of this process. Through close source analysis, she shows how diarists strove to reconstitute themselves into historical subjects for change by engaging with hegemonic discourses of time, class, space, and gender in their narration of daily life. Yet the unique formal characteristics of diary-writing also thwarted a coherent representation of the ideal “modern socialist self,” rendering the writers’ political identifications unstable and insecure. Ultimately, this thesis argues that personal diary-writing both reflected and propelled the crisis of state-socialist modernization, revealing the complex interplay of writing, power, and subject-formation during a time of unprecedented social and political upheaval.
Supervisors: Prof. Antonia Finnane, Prof. Kate McGregor
Other happenings
Associate Professor Kristian Camilleri (History and Philosophy of Science) is a founding member of Conversation at the Crossroads, an initiative that got going 4 years ago, with the aim of raising the level of public conversation on the critical issues of our time. Though based in Melbourne, C@C has attracted a good deal of interest in other states and has ran a number of online events drawing a large international audience.
Over the last four years C@C have run a range of events, small and large, both online and in person, covering a wide rage of topics, including war in Gaza, economic inequality within Australia and across the world, mental health, Australia’s energy policy, the future of universities in Australia and climate change.
Last spring, C@C ran a 6-week series Ethics in Turbulent Times, which featured several leading figures in their respective fields of endeavour, including internationally renowned philosophers, Peter Singer and Thomas Metzinger.
In one of the most ambitions projects to date, C@C convened an Online Citizen Assembly in late April in the lead-up to the Federal election. This was the first of its kind in Australia, using the most advanced technology available for this purpose – developed by Stanford’s globally recognised Deliberative Democracy Lab.
The idea behind this initiative was that a degree of experimentation is needed to breathe new life into democratic processes at all levels of human governance – from local to national to global.
The chosen theme of the first discussion was the Coalition’s plan to build seven nuclear power stations by 2050, and its implications for Australia’s energy future, climate change policy, and the prospects for democratic deliberation and decision-making in this country. The hope is that this will be the first a several such assemblies, which will be developed, refined and scaled up in the light of experience.
As many already know (he has been delivering a variety of research talks across the School), a current and very welcome academic visitor in SHAPS this semester is Professor Daryn Lehoux from Queens University, Canada. Daryn studies ancient science in all its forms. He is the author of Creatures Born of Mud and Slime (Hopkins, 2017), What Did the Romans Know? (Chicago, 2012), and Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 2007), as well as an edited volume on Lucretius and two forthcoming monographs, Epistemic Corruption and Progress in Antiquity (Princeton), and Ancient Science (Chicago). And he is loving being in our part of the world. He is contactable at lehoux@queensu.ca.
Feature image: The 2025 SHAPS Ball; photo by EXP Media; hosted by Unimelb History Society, MUCLASS, MUPS and Chariot Journal.
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