SHAPS Digest (June 2025)
Michael Arnold (HPS) spoke with SBS News about water cremations and human composting.
Oleg Beyda (History) was interviewed (behind paywall) for the History Teachers’ Association of New South Wales journal about his research on Russian white émigrés.
Jacobin Bosman (PhD candidate, History) published an article in Broadsides, the blog for the North American Conference on British Studies, as part of their Pride Month series, about writing and engaging with settler queer history amidst Indigenous calls for truth-telling.
Nicole Davis (PhD in History, 2023) delivered a talk at Harry Gentle Resource Centre, Griffith University, on ‘Occupations for Ladies: Entrepreneurial Woman in Brisbane’s Nineteenth-Century Arcades.’
In December 1877, the Royal Exhibition Arcade—the first of its kind in Brisbane—opened near the corner of Queen and Edward Streets. Inspired by the grand arcades of Europe and Britain, these elegant spaces quickly became bustling centres of commerce and leisure, celebrated for their sophistication and their role in shaping the economic growth of the young colony. But beyond the stylish shopfronts and fashionable crowds, these arcades also provided opportunities for a very different kind of trailblazer: entrepreneurial women. Often seen simply as shoppers, women in fact played vital roles in the life of Brisbane’s arcades—as shopkeepers, professionals, and pioneers in their own right. From milliners and dressmakers to fruiterers, music teachers, hairdressers, clairvoyants, and even employment agents, these women forged independent careers and managed thriving businesses—often without the backing of a male relative. In this talk, urban historian Nicole Davis introduces the remarkable businesswomen who shaped Brisbane’s arcades and, with them, the city’s early commercial landscape. Through their stories, we uncover the ingenuity, resilience and ambition that defined their place in Brisbane’s economic and social fabric.
Master dyer Kencho Dekar, visiting scholar at the Grimwade Centre, discussed with Sabine Cotte (Cultural Materials Conversation) his work preserving Bhutanese textiles, in an article published in Pursuit.
Tonia Eckfeld (Principal Fellow, Cultural Materials Conservation) is curator of the exhibition, Terracotta Warriors: Legacy of the First Empire, at the Western Australian Museum. She was interviewed by WA Today about the exhibition.
Julie Fedor‘s research (History) on the manufacturing of enemy images of Ukrainians by the Soviet/Russian state security apparatus was featured (in Norwegian) on Norway’s TV2 website.
Julie Fedor was among the signatories of an open letter published in the Guardian by 60 scholars in support of Fiona Hill, who was recently unjustly attacked as a ‘warmonger’ over her stance on Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Patriarchy Inc., the new book by Cordelia Fine (HPS), was reviewed in Nature and listed as a Financial Times Best summer books of 2025: Business.
Zoë Laidlaw (History) was co-author of an article in Pursuit reflecting on the colonial pastoralists from Western Victoria who dispossessed Indigenous people while enriching our university.
Marilyn Lake (Professorial Fellow, (History) published a review of Steve Vizard’s book Nation, Memory, Myth: Gallipoli and the Australian Imaginary (MUP 2025), in the Australian Book Review (behind paywall).
Tim Parkin‘s (Classics & Archaeology) video-presentation introducing On Old Age (Cato Maior de Senectute) by Cicero was published online as part of the Arts Faculty’s Great Books Bite Size series.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) wrote this dialogue (although really it is more of a monologue, in the mouth of the venerable Cato the Elder) in 44 BC, probably just after the assassination of Julius Caesar; he wrote another short work on friendship at the same time, along with a much longer work on duties (De Officiis). The treatise on old age is a fine piece of Latin prose, beautifully crafted and generally informative and interesting, although Cato/Cicero does have a tendency to ramble a bit at points (especially about farming), as he himself admits.
Sean Scalmer (History) published a review of Michael Quinlan’s Contesting Inequality and Worker Mobilisation: Australia 1851–1880 (Routledge 2021) in Labour History; and a review of Hannah Forsyth’s book Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World, 1870–2008 (Cambridge University Press 2023) in Australian Historical Studies.
Jonathan Tehusijarana (PhD in History, 2023) published an article for Indonesia at Melbourne on Indonesia’s new history project.
Nicole Tse (Grimwade Centre) debunked common misconceptions about the field of Conservation, in a video produced by the Faculty of Arts.
The work of Elizabeth Tunstall (PhD in History 2022, now Visiting Research Fellow, University of Adelaide) was the cover feature article in BBC History Magazine. The article introduces the doomed romance between Queen Elizabeth I of England and the Duke of Anjou. Their courtship began in 1579 and for a time it seemed likely to end in marriage. However, the objections of her people, who preferred a Virgin Queen to an entanglement with France, would eventually doom it.
Academic Publications
Purushottama Bilimoria (Principal Fellow, Philosophy), Is There an Unholy Collusion Between Science and Religion in India? Interrogating Meera Nanda, of the Five Horse Angels, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research
A Mahābhārata kind of textual war has been raging between science (the sciences) and religion (theology and traditional ortho-doxastic systems), for some time now, let us say since the Renaissance period, through Europe’s Enlightenment, to the present era. This war has many protagonists and antagonists on both sides. Both sides of the camp engage in quasi-philosophical and other intellectual disputations to either drive the wedge of disagreement toward, as it were, the death of one side, or attempt a rapprochement between the seemingly incommensurable claimants to the truth. The fangs and reverberations of this war have been spilling over onto the Indian subcontinent as well, since about the late nineteenth century, albeit with significant differences. In this latter fray enters Meera Nanda, a strident apologist for the eventual triumph of science or ‘objectivity’ over the ruse of religions. That in itself is not an ignoble cause. But she further champions a thesis of the wayward contemporary “collusion” of Indian science and religion, i.e., of what she calls ‘the emerging state-temple-corporate complex’. The paper offers a critique of Nanda’s claim, on the one hand, for want of convincing evidence for the overarching claim, and, on the other hand, the utter disregard on the part of the sectarian-right for the methods and intersubjective epistemé of science. The Nobel Laureate C V Raman arguably had chauvinist strains in the way he treated his female research fellows, as Abha Sur points out in a separate study which I discuss. But here too there is no direct complicitous relation between science and religion; rather the problematic relation lies with genderized caste proclivity in modern Indian science practices as in the culture broadly. The present paper is a sequel to ‘War and Peace between Science and Religion: The Divine Arch after the Four Horsemen’, published in the Journal of the Indian Council for Philosophical Research 28:2 (2011).
Dan Halliday (Philosophy), Shareholders and Organizational Wrongdoing, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy
In Organizations as Wrongdoers, Stephanie Collins maintains that shareholders are members, and parts, of organizations. As such, they stand to be implicated in organizational wrongdoing. In this paper, I suggest that there are alternative ways of making sense of how shareholders (sometimes) incur moral obligations in light of wrongdoing by companies in which they own shares. Such obligations can be seen as implications of shareholders having property rights in companies (despite legal protections of limited liability) and implications of plausible general principles about the morality of benefitting from injustice. Neither of these approaches require treating shareholders as being parts or members of companies. I then present some independent reasons for doubting whether shareholders really stand in membership or parthood relationships to firms in which they own shares. This depends on some reconstruction of more abstract claims Collins makes about parts “realizing a structure” of a whole, and how exactly the ideas of parthood and membership make for distinct (if coextensive) concepts. Finally, I argue that if shareholders must count as members of firms, then so too must some other agents that Collins wants to treat as nonmembers, such as self-employed contractors.
Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre (eds), The Popular Wobbly: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim (University of Minnesota Press, 2025).
The Popular Wobbly brings together a wide selection of writings by T-Bone Slim, the most popular and talented writer belonging to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Slim wrote humorous, polemical pieces, engaging with topics like labor and class injustice, which were mostly published in IWW publications from 1920 until his death in 1942. Although relatively little is known about Slim, editors Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre coalesce the latest research on this enigmatic character to create a vivid portrait that adds valuable context for the array of writings assembled here.
Known as “the laureate of the logging camps,” Slim also composed numerous songs that have been performed and recorded by Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and Candie Carawan, who in 1960 updated Slim’s song “The Popular Wobbly” with Civil Rights–era lyrics. Slim’s witticisms, sayings, and exhortations (“Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack”; “Only the poor break laws—the rich evade them”) were widely discussed among fellow hobos across the “jungle” campfires that dotted the railways, and some even transcribed his commentary on boxcars that traveled the country. Yet despite Slim’s importance and fame during his lifetime, his work disappeared from public view almost immediately after his death.
The Popular Wobbly is the first critical edition of Slim’s work and also a significant contribution to literature about working-class writers, the radical labor movement, and the history and culture of nomadism and precarity. With this publication, Slim’s rediscovered writings can once again inspire artists and activists to march and agitate for a more just and equitable world.
The June issue of Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, edited by Purushottama Bilimoria (Principal Fellow, Philosophy), was published.
Awards & Appointments
Bronwyn Beech Jones (History) and Iryna Skubii (Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies, History) have been shortlisted for the Philippa Hetherington Prize, awarded by the Australian Historical Association for the best postgraduate thesis in general history (excluding Australian history) and named in honour of the late Dr Philippa Hetherington.
The HPS Podcast, hosted and produced by Samara Greenwood (PhD candidate, HPS), has been awarded the 2024 British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) Ayrton Prize for digital engagement. The Ayrton Prize for digital or online engagement is awarded by the BSHS Outreach and Engagement committee. Committee members were impressed with the wide range of topics covered by the podcast, the accessibility for varied audiences, and the high levels of engagement attained.
Jesse Seeberg-Gordon (PhD candidate, History) has been awarded the 2025 Fellows’ Essay Prize.
Jesse won the prize for his article, ‘Realism, Fascism, and Australia’s Cold War: The Whitlam Government’s de jure Recognition of the Baltic Annexation’, published in Ajalooline Ajakiri: The Estonian Historical Journal (in Estonian).
The Whitlam Government’s decision in 1974 to recognise the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, which occurred during World War II in 1940, was a puzzling and complex affair. Though these events remain largely shrouded in mystery, they have received some attention in recent years, specifically in Estonian historiography. Using new archival materials from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and other sources including an interview with a retired Australian diplomat, the article sought to establish why, exactly, the recognition occurred. The article found that the decision occurred more gradually than previously thought, spread across two steps throughout 1972-1974. It cast doubt on findings from previous research that the recognition resulted from ‘covert pressure’ by the Soviet Government, or that it was somehow connected to the then-ongoing Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. Instead, the article suggested more straightforward reasons for the recognition, which were situated within the Australian domestic political context.
Will Hoff (PhD candidate, History), runner-up for the 2025 Fellows’ Essay Prize.
Will received this recognition for his article, “The Two Faces of Guy of Gisborne,” published in the Swiss Review of General and Comparative Literature.
The fifteenth-century poem “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne” explores themes of self-image and class conflict, rendered most visible by the outlaw’s violent disfiguration of the titular villain’s face, and therefore his social identity. Gisborne is a yeoman, a man of middling social rank, yet he foregoes his duty to his community by hunting down a member of his own class: Robin Hood. After Robin kills and beheads Gisborne, he disguises himself in the villain’s clothing, seeking to claim the bounty on his own head, yet there is more to Robin’s posthumous attack than simple opportunism. This paper explores late medieval social and literary themes of self-fashioning and common purpose through the disturbed face of Guy of Gisborne, a traitorous construction which is revealed, destroyed, and manipulated by the tale’s protagonist, Robin Hood.
The annual Fellows’ Essay Prize is generously funded by the SHAPS Fellows and Friends of History Group. We are deeply grateful for the ongoing support and encouragement that they offer our postgraduate researchers.
PhD completion
Nathan Avis, A Mirror for Pharaohs: Hecataeus of Abdera and His Egyptian Utopia (PhD in Arts, 2025)
Few figures from the early Hellenistic period could match Hecataeus of Abdera’s legacy. His now fragmentary Aegyptiaca, a survey of Egyptian history and customs, succeeded Book II of Herodotus’ Historiae as the authoritative account of Egypt and its culture, serving as a principal source for both Book I of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca and Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. Hecataeus also seems to have been the most immediate influence on the notorious theology of Euhemerus. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Aegyptiaca contains the earliest known ethnographic survey of the Jewish people by a Greek author. In fact, Hecataeus’ excursus on the Jews was so influential that, for better or for worse, it became part of the vulgate tradition upon which later authors like Posidonius, Strabo, and, of course, Tacitus would draw.
However, despite his importance, Classicists have traditionally held Hecataeus in low esteem. In particular, it is often claimed that Hecataeus exhibits a poor understanding of Egyptian culture and society. Reputable scholars like Jaeger, Jacoby, and Murray have accused the Abderite of presenting Egypt as an orientalised Platonic utopia, a “Kallipolis on the Nile”. Moreover, most scholars believe that Hecataeus’ Egyptian utopia made no substantive contributions to the development of Greek philosophy. Even the most recent critics have maintained that Hecataeus was a slave to Platonic thought.
This thesis contests both of those assumptions. Firstly, it is argued that Hecataeus’ understanding of Egyptian culture is far better than scholars have been willing to acknowledge. This contention is substantiated through a consideration of modern Egyptological research that those aforementioned Classicists either did not have access to or simply ignored. As the thesis demonstrates, while Hecataeus’ vision of Egypt is far from completely accurate, his understanding of Egyptian social and religious thought does surpass that of earlier authors like Herodotus.
This thesis also restores Hecataeus’ reputation as an intellectual. The conventional understanding of Hecataeus as a slave to Platonic precedent does not give sufficient credit to his nuanced understanding of Egyptian thought. As demonstrated by the thesis, Hecataeus picked up where Plato left off in works like Politicus and Leges, speculating on how Egyptian concepts such as Ma’at could be exploited in order to maintain political stability and social harmony within a constitutional monarchy.
Supervisors: Prof. Hyun Jin Kim, Assoc. Prof. Gijs Tol
Research Higher Degree Milestones
Tayla Newland, Reframing Identity and Interaction in Ancient South Italy: Locating Social Networks and Cultural Agents (MA Completion Seminar, Classics & Archaeology)
My research project establishes a new agenda for studies of identity and interaction in pre-Roman southern Italy. Its aims are twofold: (i) to rethink the nature of relations between ‘colonial’ Greek and indigenous communities, in order to (ii) expound the identities of local agents who shaped regional connectivity. Through a novel archaeological network analysis of burials spanning 550－350 BCE, my thesis reframes our understanding of gender roles and cultural exchange in southern Italy, and in antiquity at large. Ultimately, its outcomes challenge the status quo by demonstrating that women and indigenous groups actively engendered social change in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Supervisors: Dr Lieve Donnellan; Prof. Hyun Jin Kim; Dr Ted Robinson (University of Sydney)
2025 Rabati Excavation
Feature image: View of excavation trenches on the summit at Rabati, southwest Georgia; photographer Andrew Jamieson.
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