History Matters - Welcome to the blogsite for the Discipline of History at the University of Sydney.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Reflecting on our 2025/2026 Social Inclusion Program

Last December saw another successful launch of our 2025/2026 Social Inclusion Program. As we look forward to all of our exciting plans for 2026, we wanted to take a chance to reflect on the successful launch of our program at the end of 2025 and our plans for 2026.

The History Department’s Social Inclusion Program aims to foster educational aspiration among disadvantaged cohorts across New South Wales high schools through workshops and peer-mentoring. The driving ethos of the program is to address the underrepresentation of students from low socioeconomic, regional, rural, and diverse backgrounds at the University of Sydney. Deliberately structured to be of service to our partner schools, program initiates and strengthens connections with schools the University has not traditionally been associated with.

Our flagship initiative for the Social Inclusion Program is the History Extension Mentoring Program. With five sessions scheduled over the next twelve months, the mentoring program pairs HSC History Extension students with University of Sydney History student mentors as they work on their history extension major project. To read more on how the program works, see our earlier post on the program here.

The 2025/2026 program is our biggest yet since its re-launch in 2023 and we are proud to announce we are working with over nine schools from all corners of New South Wales. By insisting on only working with rural, regional, or Low-SES schools, this year the program has particularly been successful in allocating our resources to those who need it the most.

Importantly, the sheer scale of the program is a testament to the generosity of our student mentors to volunteer their time to support these students. In a tertiary education environment that is becoming increasingly hostile to students interested in pursuing the arts and humanities, the program is a testament to the perseverance of our history cohorts in building community around the power of historical storytelling. In the process, the program has been able to connect with a wide-ranging student body whose projects speak to their diverse life experiences, identities, and interests.

We are also excited to announce that the department is expanding the program to Stages 4 and 5 (Years 7-10) in 2026. While the mentoring program is a vital initiative to support students in connecting with the world of tertiary education, this new initiative offers support to schools in delivering imaginative co-curricular support in earlier years.

In December, in tandem with the launch of our mentoring program, Lecturer Dr James Findlay and Social Inclusion Program Manager Mia Retallack visited Cecil Hills High School to coordinate a ‘Medieval Experience’ for their year seven students. In an object-based learning session focused on Medieval maps, in consolidating students’ recent study of the medieval periods, we encouraged them to expand their conceptions of the pejorative so-called ‘dark ages’. Throughout the session, students strengthened their familiarity with primary source analysis, encountering a history world not isolated in castles and struck down by plague but shaped by diverse religions, local politics and the transnational trade of goods, and ideas. In turn, the session sought to challenge how students imagined the world around them and how our modern experience too is shaped by broader belief systems and meta-narratives.

Looking forward to 2026, we are excited to continue these initiatives with our partner schools. As the mentoring program will continue, the department is excited to continue collaborating with Cecil Hills High School in celebrating the schools 30^th anniversary by helping record the history of the school. While these engagements provide students with touchpoints with the tertiary education environment, on a more profound level, they offer new insight into what the telling of history can mean not just on the pages of textbooks, but in their own lives.

CFP: Broken Knowledge Trajectories

‘Past and Present’ Cluster of Vere Gordon Childe Centre

The University of Sydney

Friday 27 February 2026, 9-4pm

Org.: Dr Hélène Sirantoine (School of Humanities, The University of Sydney), Dr Gaëlle Bosseman (Tempora-Laboratoire de sciences historiques, Université Rennes 2)

The History of knowledge is a long-established field of scholarly inquiry. In recent years, however, increasing attention has been paid to investigate mechanisms, intermediaries and pathways for the transmission and transfer of information, wisdom, experience or expertise across historical societies, groups or individuals. At the heart of such research, the concept of circulation allows to examine both the trajectories of knowledge in its various contexts, and the cultural, scientific and intellectual choices made by given environments or societies. Yet, scholars frequently encounter a lack of direct evidence necessary to reconstruct these pathways and networks of knowledge transmission, therefore hypothesised through circumstantial indicators, but not fully documented. What to do when confronted with such gaps in the evidence? How to deal with broken chains of transmission? This workshop seeks to precisely reflect on these questions. By focusing on the methodological challenges posed by broken or elusive routes of knowledge transmission, it aims to foster dialogue among specialists from diverse backgrounds and expertise in order to compare approaches and questions.

This investigation was initiated by Dr Gaëlle Bosseman and Dr Hélène Sirantoine on the specific milieux of the Middle Ages which they specialise on. However, the methodological problem at the centre of this inquiry transcends temporal, geographical and disciplinary boundaries. By inviting collaborative reflection among scholars from a range of disciplines, this workshop aims to enrich approaches to the complexities of knowledge circulation in an interdisciplinary, trans-period and trans-cultural perspective.

We welcome propositions for 15-minute presentations focused on a specific example or case-study to be shared with the reflection group. If interested, please send an abstract (150-250 words) by Friday 19 December to [email protected] and [email protected]

Note that this is planned as a hybrid event (Sydney time), to allow the participation of overseas colleagues. While we favour in-person participation for local colleagues, please let us know if this is not an option for you.

Book Launch: Caught on Screen: Australia’s Convict History in Film and Television

Author James Findlay in Conversation with Professor Michelle Arrow

From innocent criminals to radical revolutionaries, feisty feminists to manly pioneers, egalitarian settlers to violent invaders, Caught on Screen shows how over successive generations the shape-shifting convict emerged on screen as a potent historical symbol.

Join us for a night of conversation and celebration as we launch James Findlay’s new book: Caught on Screen, with our special guest, Professor Michelle Arrow.

Thursday, 6 Nov, 5:30pm for a 6 pm start – 8pm AEDT

Vere Gordon Childe Centre Boardroom, Camperdown NSW, Australia

Register Now!

Convicts loom large in Australian history.As transported criminals and the first European settlers, they have shackled the nation to a curious and contested origin story. Historians were largely silent on their exploits until the second half of the twentieth century, but before then a tradition of convict representation on screen appeared with the rise of cinema, taking hold of the popular imagination. From silent films to more recent television series, screen culture has elevated the convict experience to become a key historical narrative through which filmmakers and audiences have repeatedly reframed and challenged an understanding of Australia’s colonial past. Caught on Screen traverses this history of convict representation for the first time.

Through detailed archival research into their production and reception, the book explores engaging case studies produced in Australia and internationally, including the work of Douglas Sirk, Alfred Hitchcock and Jennifer Kent. It illuminates the fact that the convict as historical symbol is one that intersected with, and helped to direct, major debates about nationalism, the legacies of colonisation, Aboriginal dispossession and the origins and character of Australian society.

James Findlay:

James Findlay is lecturer in the discipline of history where he teaches Australian history and researches historical film and television studies, convict history, Australian popular culture, and public history. He has held the Australian Film Institute Research Collection Fellowship and prior to his appointment was the Archival Project Manager for the Society of Australian Genealogists. Before becoming a historian, he worked extensively in film and television production, mostly in the field of documentary, for companies including Beyond Television, Screenworld, and Film Australia.

Michelle Arrow:

Michelle Arrow is professor in modern history at Macquarie University. She is the author of several books, including The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (2019), which was awarded the 2020 Ernest Scott Prize for history, and the edited collection Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution (2023). She is currently working on a biography of the Australian writer and broadcaster Anne Deveson. Her most recent book is Personal Politics: Sexuality, Gender and the Remaking of Citizenship in Australia, co-authored with Leigh Boucher, Barbara Baird and Robert Reynolds (Monash University Publishing, 2024).

Register

Journalism Betrayed: Reporting on Modern Day Genocide

History on Wednesday Seminar Series | Semester 2 2025

Dr. Roberto Chauca wins a 2025 Humanities Travelling Fellowship

Dr. Roberto Chauca was one of nine early-career researchers who were awarded Travelling Fellowships by the Australian Academy of the Humanities to conduct projects addressing issues of national and international significance, such as the impact of political mis/disinformation on social platforms, historical attitudes towards women’s work & how Pacific communities respond to climate interventions.

Humanities Travelling Fellowships enable early-career researchers to undertake research overseas, where they may access materials otherwise inaccessible, connect with international organisations, researchers and forge new networks.

For a list of all recipients and their project, click the link above.

Unearthing Indigenous Voices from Early Modern Amazonia 1560-1561

Across 1560 and 1561, Spanish captains Pedro de Ursua and Lope de Aguirre charted the second European voyage along the Amazon River. Dr Chauca Tapia’s project aims to unearth, for the first time, a complete edition of two anonymous accounts of that expedition—which alludes to a search for the mythical city of El Dorado, and the murder of Ursua.

Under the Fellowship, Dr Chauca will travel to Madrid, Spain, to access documents at the National Library of Spain and the Royal Academy of History, and develop a monograph-length manuscript for publication.

“This fellowship will provide me with the opportunity to challenge the conventional interpretation of Spanish explorations along the Amazon River in the early modern period, generally portrayed as events of heroism and discovery. Instead, the documents I seek to transcribe and translate from the Madrid archives will reinforce my research profile as a historian who has sought to position Indigenous knowledge as the foundation that enabled Europeans to learn about the human and natural landscapes of the Americas.”

You can find more information here about Dr Roberto Chauca

2025 Wood Memorial History Lecture

Creative Histories: A Conversation

With Shauna Bostock, Andre Dao, Katerina Teaiwa, and Sophie Loy-Wilson

Wed, 27 Aug, 5:30pm – 7:30pm AEST

Chau Chak Wing Museum

Camperdown NSW, Australia

In this Wood Memorial Lecture/History Now event, Dr. Sophie Loy-Wilson from the discipline of History at the University of Sydney will sit down with three extraordinary scholars who have drawn on lived experiences and different methodologies to produce creative histories that have made an impact on how we think about and do history. Shauna Bostock, André Dao, and Katerina Teaiwa will discuss their past and future projects, and challenge us to imagine new ways of approaching, practicing and presenting history in Australia today.

The Wood Memorial Lecture is funded by a generous endowment to the discipline of History in the School of Humanities to facilitate a public Lecture in Australian History.

Please join us for a reception following the lecture.

This event is in the 2025 History Now series. History Now is presented by the History Council of NSW in conjunction with the Chau Chak Wing Museum and the Vere Gordon Childe Centre and the Powerful Stories Network. History Now 2025 is supported by Create NSW.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Shauna Bostock is currently the Indigenous Australian Research Editor at the National Centre of Biography at ANU. A former primary school teacher, Shauna Bostock’s curiosity about her ancestors took her all the way to a PhD in Aboriginal history, which turned into a book entitled Reaching Through Time: Finding my family’s stories(Allen & Unwin). The book was awarded the NSW Community and Regional History Prize in 2024, and praised as a ‘compelling blend of Indigenous history, community history and the history of colonial settlement.’

André Dao is an author and researcher from Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. His debut novel, Anam, won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Voss Literary Award. In 2024, he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. André was awarded the 2024 Pascall Prize for Cultural Criticism for essays published in The Saturday Paper, Meanjin and Liminal. He is a postdoctoral fellow with the ARC Laureate Program in Global Corporations and International Law at Melbourne Law School, where is working on a history of how the computing company, IBM, travelled to the Global South.

Katerina Teaiwa is Professor of Pacific Studies in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. She is a scholar, artist, activist and nationally award-winning teacher of Banaban, I-Kiribati (Tabiteuean) and African American heritage born and raised in Fiji. Her exhibition “Dance Protest” is currently showing at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney.

Images: courtesy of Katerina Teaiwa

Register Now

History, Genocide and Gaza: A Conversation with Prof Daniel Blatman

Friday, 1 August 5-6pm

RD Watt Building, Room 203

Please join us for an informal conversation with Daniel Blatman, eminent scholar of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies. Like other historians of the Holocaust, Blatman argues that Israel is currently committing a genocide in Gaza. “I have been engaged in researching the Holocaust for about 40 years,” he writes. “I never imagined in my worst nightmares that the Jewish state would bomb starving children to death”. What is the role of historical research in the context of the unfolding genocide? And what does this moment ask of us, as historians and other scholars?

Our discussion will be organised around two of Prof Blatman’s recent pieces in Haaretz:

“There’s No Auschwitz in Gaza. But It’s Still Genocide”

“Invoking Never Again in Israel, as More Children Die”

If you would like to attend the discussion, please come having read these two short articles and bring questions for Prof Blatman. Staff and students all welcome.

Bio: Daniel Blatman is Professor of Modern Jewish history and Holocaust Studies. He has worked on the history of the Jewish labor movement in Eastern Europe, the Holocaust in Poland, and on Nazi annihilation policy at the end of World War II. His publications include: For our Freedom and Yours, The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland 1939–1945 (2003), Reportage from the Ghetto, The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw Ghetto (2005), and The Death Marches, The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (2011).

Sponsored by the Powerful Stories Network, the Sydney Staff and Students Workshops on Anthropology, Research and Methods (SSSWARM), and the Discipline of Anthropology

Contact: Michael Edwards, Discipline of Anthropology, [email protected]

Celebrating Jim Masselos

Historians in the Making: Celebrating Our HSC Mentoring Program

Dr James Findlay, Lecturer in the History Department presenting to students at Canley Vale High School

Last week, the History Department once again celebrated the successful completion of our History Extension Mentoring Program, a cornerstone of our Social Inclusion Program. As the second iteration of the program since its relaunch in 2023, we have been privileged to continue working with schools such as Canley Vale High School and Corowa High School, while also making connections with Hastings Secondary College, Port Macquarie, Woonona High School, and Gymea Technology High School.

The aim of the program is to address the underrepresentation of students from low socio-economic, regional/rural and diverse backgrounds at the University of Sydney, and in history courses especially. The program initiates and strengthens connections between partner schools and the University and is structured in such a way as to be of service to our partner schools, responding to the needs of both students and their teachers. By familiarising high school students with the University, the program aims to foster the aspirations of students from disadvantaged communities by introducing them to University life – while supporting their learning at high school.

The History Extension program in the HSC consists of two parts – ‘constructing history’ and the ‘major project’: a 2500-word research essay on any historiographical topic of their choosing. For most students, this is the most significant historical work they have done. Our program provides a number of workshops to support students both academically but also pastorally through developing these extended works, with each session constituting an hour long talk from a member of staff in the department and an hour of mentoring with their volunteer mentors from our undergraduate and postgraduate history cohorts.

Featuring four sessions over the course of a year, the program paired HSC students studying the History Extension course with a University of Sydney History student volunteers as a mentor for their major project for the unit. With projects ranging from a historiographical investigation of goth subculture to revisionist accounts of colonialism, the project both gave these students vital support through this challenging unit, while building a relationship with a mentor who can support them through the various trials and tribulations of the HSC.

In reflecting on the four sessions, we have held across the past six months; this has been an incredibly valuable experience for mentors and mentees alike. For mentor Lizzy Kwok, “The mentoring program was an incredibly enjoyable and fulfilling experience! As much as we meant to “teach”, I learnt so much from younger students who had such a wide variety of interests — from medieval England to imperial Russia.” Across the board, not only was this a chance for mentors to further engage in historical studies but translate their passions into something greater.

For the students, connecting with both mentors and historians in the department has offered a chance to demystify the university ‘institution’ which can often feel quite far away. This was not only a chance for engagement with the university, but an opportunity for their ideas and voices to be heard.