As someone who has held a deep passion for cinema for many years now, the endurance of artistic collaboration and a sense of community provided through the shared endeavour of cinematic creation has always been a defining aspect of the medium – one whose success relies on the connections formed with others.
The Society of Australian Cinema Pioneers has become one such organisation where camaraderie endures. Founded in Sydney in 1933 by veterans of the motion picture industry, the society has remained dedicated to the recognition of its members who have contributed 20 or more years of service to the Australian Motion Picture Industry – whether involved in distribution, production, exhibition, administration and education.
As membership numbers have increased over the years, various state branches have been formed nationally. Regardless of where you may find yourself across Australia, there will be a branch of the society where members can encounter other industry professionals, reconnect with colleagues, or form new friendships. The society often organises social functions – networking events, film screenings, dinner catchups – and holds annual award presentations of National and State Cinema Pioneers of the Year, where members are recognised for their decades of influential contributions across various sectors of the Australian Motion Picture Industry. The community celebration of the achievements of individuals is at the forefront of the values of the society.
Members of The Society of Australian Cinema Pioneers in 2023.
Although I had never encountered The Society of Australian Cinema Pioneers before, I was immediately struck by the sense of community displayed online when researching possible organisations. The group photographs, written celebratory praise of awarded members, social media and group activities – an organised but communal sense of collaboration appeared on screen before me. I suppose I had never considered the importance of a society for industry professionals beyond film production sets, boardrooms, and other formal spaces, where a community can come together for their shared passion for cinema and love of the industry. A society which reflects the values of community crucial for the cinematic medium as a whole, and for film spectators like myself, who form our own connections based around the dedicated work of these industry professionals.
Cinema Pioneers during the Second Annual Dinner in 1934.
To be expected, the past 91 years have seen various organisational changes.
After conducting research and collaborating with a member of the society, the startling piece of information which immediately grabbed my attention was the admittance of membership for women only occurred in 1989. For 56 years the society was for men only, even though there remained a substantial female presence in the Australian film industry for decades. How then has the society become so diverse and inclusive since 1989? My project will focus upon this question among many others, uncovering how women changed the community of the society from 1989 until now.
As the Australian Motion Picture Industry has become increasingly inclusive, diverse, and equitable for women since 1989, The Society of Australian Cinema Pioneers has evolved to reflect the changing demographics of the cinema community. In doing so, the shared sense of community provided by the society has never been so widespread and enduring, across all ages and genders, as it is today.
In 2011, Jan-Maree Ball, a former officer in the Royal Australian Navy and Air Force, ignited a drive to ensure Australia’s service members deployed overseas would feel the support of their country. The idea arose after learning that an Australian soldier in a German hospital had received a quilt from an American volunteer. Moved by the notion that Australian Defence Force (ADF) members should experience such gestures from their own country, Jan-Maree began what would grow into a national project dedicated to sending personalised quilts and laundry bags to ADF members far from home. Initially a small, personal effort, Aussie Hero Quilts (and Laundry Bags), quickly gathered momentum as quilters across Australia rallied to the cause. By 2015, over 10,000 quilts had been crafted and sent, each personalised to reflect the recipient’s name, unit, or interests—a lasting reminder that they were remembered. Jan-Maree’s commitment was recognised when she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), and despite a devastating fire that destroyed her home and the project’s headquarters in 2016, the community’s support ensured that the initiative continued without pause. To date, thousands of quilts and laundry bags have been sent to Australian Defence Force personnel across the globe, reflecting both Jan-Maree’s vision and the generosity of countless volunteers.
More than just providing physical items, the sewing project has created deep connections between the volunteers and recipients. Many of those who craft these quilts and bags are veterans or have family members in the military, and for them, quilting offers a way to channel their feelings into something tangible. The care taken in selecting fabrics, designing patterns, and stitching each quilt and bag is an act of personal connection, with the final product representing far more than just a practical gift. For recipients, receiving a quilt or bag becomes a profound emotional moment. The personalised touch reminds them that, even in distant and challenging locations, they are not forgotten by those at home. Some recipients have described receiving their quilt or bag as a turning point, offering comfort during dark times. One recipient shared how the quilt helped him through a difficult period, while a Vietnam veteran reconnected with an old friend through the insignia sewn into his own. Such stories reveal how these items are imbued with personal meaning and can rekindle memories, provide strength, and maintain a connection with home.
The broader impact of the project lies in the community it has created. Volunteers from diverse backgrounds, united by a common cause, have formed a tightly woven support network. This spirit of connection and purpose transcends geographical boundaries and social divides, fostering a national sense of care and solidarity. As the project moves into its second decade, it provides physical comfort and an enduring link between ADF members and the Australian public. Each lovingly crafted quilt and bag serves as a reminder that no matter where they are, these recipients are part of a broader community that values and supports them. The threads that tie these quilts and bags together also weave a deeper network of care, resilience, and remembrance as strong as the fabric itself.
I have been living near Darling Harbour (only a 30-minute walk away) for three years, and I enjoy strolling along the Harbour with a cup of coffee to relax after a busy day of university work. Interestingly, however, it was only my first visit to the Australian National Maritime Museum three weeks ago with my fellow classmates of HSTY3811 History Beyond the Classroom. I must admit that I have been missing quite a lot whenever I visited Darling Harbour – especially as a student studying Australian History.
Australia is a huge island nation, and our histories, narratives, and even daily lives are closely related to the ocean. This is exactly what and how the Australian National Maritime Museum hopes to inform Australians with – connecting past, present and future and challenging existing narratives with a modern perspective of Australian history abounding with stories and peoples who had different relationships with the sea: First Nations Peoples’ living cultural connections to Mother Nature; British arrival and the establishment of the colony; arrivals of immigrants from the gold rush period till nowadays for the opportunities and the praise of multiculturalism here in Australia.
Australia – A nation built on nations and shaped by the sea. (Photo taken by me)
I was not raised in Australia yet has been studying Sociology and Australian History here in Sydney for a few years, and have listened to different histories told through stories throughout the past few years when I am on domestic trips to places like Uluru, Ballarat and more. During the visit to the Maritime Museum, I learnt about artefacts that did not have the opportunity to be publicly exhibited despite their historical importance, such as the ballasts thrown off HMB Endeavour in 1770 by Lieutenant James Cook and its crew. And a visit to Uluru last year allowed me to learn about how First Nations peoples have different epistemologies and how they pass on knowledge through storytelling and lore (My apologies for not being able to tell the stories here, as some of them must be learnt on-site, and mostly importantly, I prefer not to represent First Nations peoples without the consultation with them). Therefore, I wonder what it is like to tell Australian history as an “outsider.” I believe there must be more of these “untold” or “unpopular” stories or artefacts that should be made known to the public, and potentially to connect peoples in society with these histories.
A visit to the Northern Territory in July 2023 (Photo taken by me)
When talking about all the histories and stories behind different societies and peoples, it is clear that the Australian National Maritime Museum is not just about boats. It is the waters which shaped our nation, it is the people who lived through a diverse experience and explored the land and the ocean. By preserving and sharing the stories of people from different communities, I believe that the public interest and curiosity towards the relationships between us and the ocean can be sparked, providing more opportunities for us to explore our diverse cultures, lifestyles and narratives – to continue respect and cultivate what “multiculturalism” really means.
The Australian National Maritime Museum (Photo taken by me)
In the third issue of the reestablished journal Souffles Monde/Anfas al-‘alam – which continues the trajectory of the pioneering Maghrebi intellectual journal of the same name that first published in the late 1960s – we introduced the concept of “collaborative ontologies” as a methodology for re-empowering a praxis-based critical theory. Our premise is that any viable 21st century critical theory needs to be grounded in engaging with, learning and taking the lead from Indigenous ways of knowing and being (epistemologies and ontologies) as being developed and practiced today by Indigenous scholars, activists and practitioners in both post-settler colonies of the Global North (Australasia and North America) as well as Global South (Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia). Our work builds on the genealogies and trajectories of critical theory, postcolonial studies, and decolonial studies, in particular the feminist streams across them. We argue that engaging with the histories, experiences, ideas and practices of Indigenous scholars and activists based on Indigenous research principles and methodologies is crucial to developing new forms of collective knowledge production, solidarity and action in a world increasingly – literally – on fire, with multiple polycrises that have rendered most theories and strategies for social change more or less inoperative today.
In this seminar, we apply the concept of collaborative ontologies to our work with grassroots communities of artists in Port Harcourt (Nigeria), Ezbet Khairallah (Cairo, Egypt), and the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, to explore new ways of writing history from below, and building “counter-archives,” which feminist scholars describe as collective record keeping of radical and unauthorized stories (Salime, 2022; Dakhli, 2020). We argue that this is not a merely theoretical exercise. In fact, our argument is that only through sharing our most basic experiences of being-in-the-world can we develop authentically collaborative ways of knowing and acting in it, and through these activities finally move away from an increasingly necrocapitalist modernity, and towards a global political, economic, cultural, and discursive system that heals rather than destroys our world.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Mark Le Vine is Professor of modern Middle Eastern and African histories and cultures at UC Irvine and founding director of the Program in Global Middle East Studies. A 2020-21 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author and editor of a dozen books, most recently We’ll Play till We Die: Journeys Across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslims World (California, 2022), Altered States: The Remaking of the Political in the Arab World (Routledge 2023), and Art Beyond the Edge: Creativity and Conflict in a World on Fire (California, 2025)
Lucia Sorbera is Senior Lecturer and Chair of Discipline of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney. She published widely in history of Egyptian feminism, women’s political activism, and cultural productions in the Arab world, among them, the book Sex and Desire in Muslim Cultures. Beyond Norms and Transgression from the Abbasids to the Present. Day (with Serena Tolino and Aymon Kreil, I.B. Tauris, 2021). Her forthcoming book, Biography of a Revolution. The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt, is published by University of California Press.
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences School of Humanities History at Sydney
History on Wednesday
Listening to Australian-Oceanic histories: Indigenous performance cultures at Pacific Arts festivals since 1970
Wed, 21 August 2024 12:10 – 1:30 | Hybrid event Dr Amanda Harris (Sydney) and Nardi Simpson
In the early 1970s, delegations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performers travelled across the Pacific Ocean to cultural festivals in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Japan and Hong Kong. Exploring networks across the Asia-Pacific, these acts of performance were entangled in momentous shifts in Indigenous rights and new politics of representation. Bringing new mobilities of the post-referendum era into dialogue with old practices of cultural performance, these exchanges of performance both signalled a modern post-colonial era and a reaching back into what Damon Salesa (2014) has characterised as the “deep and resonant past”. In this presentation we move between historical and recent experiences of festivals of Pacific Arts. We collaboratively bring together first-person accounts of involvement in festivals of Pacific Arts and Culture and campaigns for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, with historical efforts by key cultural and political leaders such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal and George Winunguj to establish annual festivals of the Black Pacific. Moving between past and present, we contemplate how approaches to Oceanic histories that centre song, dance and story may offer methodological insights for Australian history.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Amanda Harris is a musicologist and cultural historian who works collaboratively to explore histories of musical encounter in Australia’s Oceanic location and colonial history. Amanda is an ARC Future Fellow at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney and Director of the Sydney Unit of digital archive PARADISEC.
Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay musician, composer, author and culture keeper from the freshwater floodplains of New South Wales. Nardi’s second novel ’the belburd’ will be released by Hachette Australia in October 2024.
Hybrid Event: Places to attend in-person are limited, so please register as soon as possible to reserve your place.
Vere Gordon Childe Centre F09, Level 4, Madsen Building.
Phone +61 2 9351 2222 ABN 15 211 513 464 CRICOS Number: 00026APlease add soh.events@sydney.edu.au to your address book or senders safe list to make sure you continue to see our emails in the future.
Thank you so much for registering and/or attending one or all of our events in the “Powerful Stories” series on March 14 and March 15. We were amazed at the turn-out and felt so lucky to have such an extraordinary group of presenters and audience-members to make the events memorable – in both powerfully emotional and intellectual ways.
Quite a few of you asked about keeping in touch and/or follow-up events. In that spirit, we invite you to leave your contact details so we can stay in touch about building on the workshop especially and think together about where we might be able to go from here. We think it is important that people ‘opt-in’ to this, so we created a google form. We invite all participants from within and outside the University to join us, and those who were not able make it in the end but want to stay connected.https://forms.gle/byx9vfcQ19EVYfhy6
On this form, if you like, and have not already done so by email, etc., you can also leave some feedback if you want (entirely optional!). If you don’t want to opt-in to future discussions, you can also just leave feedback and do this anonymously. Just leave the name and email blank.
And if you did not get a chance to watch the documentary, there’s a spot on the form to let us know and we will send you a free link to watch it.
Thanks so much,
Niro Kandasamy
Michael McDonnell
Photo: Georginia Sappier-Richardson sharing her story at a TRC community visit. Photo by: Ben Pender-Cudlip. Courtesy: Upstander Project, from the movie Dawnland (https://upstanderproject.org/films/dawnland)
In 2023 our historians have graced TV screens, written in print media, and broadcast the past on radio. Noteworthy are Cindy McCreery, Marco Duranti, and James Curran’s manymedia engagements (local, nation, and international) including James’s work as International Editor at the Financial Review. A special highlight was the ABC’s Natasha Mitchell hosting Chris Hilliard and Niro Kandasamy for the Challis Lecture in History at a packed-out event broadcast on Radio National’s Big Ideas program. 2023 also witnessed the creation of five history podcasts, titled “History of University Life – Whose University? Whose Culture?”, “Monarchy in Peril”, “An Australian World”, “Making Sense of History” and “Speaking of History”. For lovers of art, John Gagné presented in the popular Art Appreciation lecture program at the Art Gallery of NSW. While on campus, History on Wednesday seminars continued to engage audiences from within and outside the university. The discipline’s commitment to outreach continued through the History Extension Mentoring Program. The 2024 program kicked off in November with an enthusiastic uptake from regional high schools. Looking ahead to the new year, two major public events are on the horizon; Professor N. Bruce Duthu (Dartmouth) will be running a public screening of his Emmy award winning documentary ‘Dawnland’ and a public workshop on narrating stories in refugee and Indigenous communities in March, and Professor Chris Clark (Cambridge) will deliver the Ward Lecture in May.
Historians and their Craft
David Brophy: I finished up the editing (all 1000+ pages!) of some WWII diaries I’ve been working on, which have now been published as A Decade in Sino-Soviet Diplomacy: The Diaries of Liu Zerong 1940-49 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). I had a journal article accepted as part of a special issue on the concept of the “Persianate” for the Papers of the Modern Language Association and submitted another article to ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies.A couple of book chapters also came out in 2023. One was part of a project with Japanese colleagues on “Historical Narratives and the Utilization of the Past in Central Asia”. The other was a chapter in Ben Kiernan’s Cambridge World History of Genocide, on mass killings during the Qing empire’s expansion into Central Asia. As part of an international group project on “Sects and Sectarianism in Chinese Islam” I was lucky enough to participate in workshops in Tokyo (January) and Riyadh (December), with the group working towards a special issue on this theme in 2024.
Roberto Chauca: I, for the first time, coordinated two units, including my own HSTY2719 and was also part of co-teaching teams in two first-year units, INGS1004 and HSTY1002. An article is forthcoming in Cartographica, journal published by the University of Toronto Press. In November I was invited to lead a seminar at The Amazon Basin as Connecting Borderland symposium organised by the Getty Foundation and colleagues from universities in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. I was also accepted to participate in the First Book Workshop in Map History at the Newberry Library in Chicago, USA and in the Fourth World Congress in Environmental History in Oulu, Norway, in February and August 2024, respectively.
Frances Clarke: I spent the first half of the year in the U.S., on long service leave, trying to catch up on a few projects delayed during covid. Our book came out in January (Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant, Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in Civil War America, New York: Oxford, 2023). We wrote half a dozen blog posts and short pieces to publicize this work and have done seven or eight interviews so far. My collaborator, one of her students, and I also spent several months completing a document project for classroom use, consisting of a dozen letters written by poor women during the Civil War along with an accompanying article: Cayla Regas, Rebecca Jo Plant, and Frances M. Clarke, “‘Do not toss this letter away’: Women’s Hardship Petitions to the U.S. Federal Government during the Civil War,”Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000. (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2023). I’m also part-way through an ARC discovery project with a number of collaborators, which focuses on the aftermath of war from the Napoleonic era to WWII. We had an article accepted earlier in the year in English Historical Review and we completed several additional chapters of our co-authored book. Coming back to teaching in second semester, I taught a first year American history unit, and a history workshop, as well as running the postgraduate seminar. Now I’m looking forward to starting something new.
James Curran: After spending the first half of the year on long service leave, I commenced a 0.6 position as International editor at the Australian Financial Review (AFR), where I write a weekly column on geopolitics and longer pieces/reviews/ essays for the Weekend AFR. I have also published a long essay in Australian Foreign Affairs on the narrative of the China ‘threat’ and in November was inducted into the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences. I also began a podcast for the discipline and faculty on the history of Australia’s relations with the world (to be released in February and available wherever you get your podcast:) and also signed a book contract with Simon & Schuster for a study of Paul Keating’s foreign policy as PM. During the year I also wrote a number of longer commentaries for Australian Book Review, appeared on the 730 Report and other ABC and local radio nations, and attended and spoke at a conference in Singapore on the Chinese economy. I also spoke at the annual conference of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
Marco Duranti: Chris Hilliard and I had an article accepted in the Law and History Review on the birching of youth on the Isle of Man. All of us in History collectively won a couple of education awards thanks to Mike McDonnell. I sold out to the mainstream media. My daughter dressed up as a ‘Bluey Monster’ for Halloween and my son succeeded in getting me to watch horror movies with him.
James Findlay: The through-line for this year has been the efforts to finish my first book. A process that could be summarised by the attached drawing my 8-year old son did. I’m happy to say that as of yesterday the last sentence of the last chapter was written. Intro and conclusion still to come, but the submission date looms, and it’s beginning to feel veryreal. Other research work in 2023 included a chapter in an edited collection, Writing Australian History on Screen, and jointly writing an article with a colleague at Deakin University on the controversy generated by the BBC historical television series Banished. I was lucky enough to travel to Paris (sigh) on a successful Partnership Collaboration Award between USYD and the Sorbonne University titled ‘Surveillance Imaginaries’. We also hosted some wonderful French scholars in Sydney in Sept and introduced them to the competitive world of Australian pub trivia. Teaching this year meant coordinating first, second, and third-year Australian history subjects. Extra-curricular activities such as an excursion to Cockatoo Island (thanks Kirsten and Brad!), weekly Australian history film screenings and (very nearly) having students’ work featured in this year’s Vivid festival added further excitement to each semester. I was also thrilled to have my first two honours students Liz Bowmer and Alice Tompson submit their theses. Their work is brilliant and I’m so very proud of their efforts. Guest teaching included lecturing for the Master of Museum and Heritage Studies and delivering a masterclass for postgrad students at the Sorbonne. Ongoing work with colleagues Mike, Niro, and Thomas in the History Extension Mentoring Program has been immensely rewarding. Running History on Wednesday and co-OEI Lead with Niro has also been a real joy (apart from glitchy technology in Lvl 8 conference room). Speaking at the FASS Teaching Symposium and receiving a Commendation for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Excellence award was a lovely way to round out the year. Writing it all down now is helping me understand why it has all gone so fast.
John Gagné: Together with his co-editors Stephen Bowd and Sarah Cockram, John published a collection of essays titled Shadow Agents of Renaissance War (Amsterdam UP, 2023). He’s also finishing a book, Vibrant Banners, with co-author Timothy McCall for the ‘Elements in the Renaissance’ series (Cambridge UP). He delivered talks (in person and virtual) in Rome, Liège, and Hong Kong. He directed the Medieval and Early Modern Centre and coordinated the History Honours Programme. John co-taught History’s senior capstone class and 2 first-year units. He worked with 8 postgraduate students, and would like to congratulate Kathryn Hempstead for her highly-praised MA thesis (which passed without revision) and Paddy Holt, who submitted his excellent PhD thesis in late September. John was nominated for a SUPRA ‘Supervisor of the Year’ award. He lectured at the Art Gallery of NSW and was interviewed in Honi Soit and on the ABC. Finally, he finished the year with a promotion to Associate Professor.
Chris Hilliard: On SSP in semester 1 I worked out the argument of my next book and wrote the first 20,000 words of it. Marco Duranti and I published an article about corporal punishment and the British constitution (well, that’s how I see it) in Law and History Review. Niro Kandasamy and I spoke at an event organized by the School of Humanities and broadcast on the ABC’s Big Ideas podcast. I continued to co-edit the OUP journal Twentieth Century British History, which is re-launching as Modern British History at the beginning of 2024. I served my first year as a member of the Council of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and became its Treasurer. I stepped in as interim Head of School at the end of October.
Niro Kandasamy: I spent the first semester teaching two units in the International and Global Studies degree. It was gratifying watching students engage with diverse concepts, histories, and case studies, especially as they hone their critical thinking skills to grapple with contemporary questions of sovereignty, justice, and freedom. A trip to London in June provided me invaluable research time at the archives, which culminated in a journal article submitted to History Workshop Journal. I spent the second semester teaching another unit in INGS, and beginning work on some exciting new projects, including co-organising two Workshops that will be held at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and the University of Sydney. A highlight of the year has been organising the History on Wednesday seminars with James Findlay – there is so much interesting work happening among fellow researchers! Finally, ongoing work on the History Extension Mentoring program with James, Michael McDonnell, and Thomas Café has been truly rewarding.
Cindy McCreery: 2023 has been another busy year for me both professionally and personally and I took Long Service Leave in Semester 2 to support my family through some big milestones. At work the highlights included extending my engagement with object-based learning in the classroom through my Honours seminar ‘Modern Monarchy and Material Culture in Global Perspective’ and my third-year seminar ‘Eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland’. I was delighted to reflect on this experience during a co-presentation with my former student Emma Slee at the University Museums Annual Conference held at the University’s Chau Chak Wing Museum in August. Another highlight was seeing my four 2022 History Honours students graduate on a beautiful day – lovely to see them reach this milestone – as well as to co-supervise another History Honours student through to successful completion at the end of 2023! It was also a pleasure returning to the Great Hall later in the year to receive a joint Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence award (alongside a Faculty award!) with my History colleagues for Student Experience Excellence. I also enjoyed running co-writing sessions for School of Humanities colleagues on weekdays throughout the year – so nice to bond over coffee and the clicking of our keyboards. With Professor Emeritus Robert Aldrich and Dr. Falko Schnicke I co-edited Global Royal Families (Oxford University Press 2024). Robert and I also recorded a six- episode podcast series ‘Monarchy in Peril’ produced by the School of Humanities’ Peter Adams – listen out for it in the new year. Our Modern Monarchy in Global Perspective Research Hub continues to thrive with over fifty members from across the globe. This year we hosted regular formal seminar papers via ZOOM as well as several special roundtable discussions on ‘Succession in Modern Monarchy’ and ‘The Coronation in Modern Monarchy’. I also continued my media work and in addition to interviews, participated in two television documentaries, one for French national TV on 19c. French explorers in Australia and one for Swedish national TV on 20c. British and Scandinavian monarchies. On the home front I shepherded my three children through Years 12, 10 and 7 respectively and survived the HSC, NAPLAN, AMEB and NSW driving exams. In 2024 I am looking forward to another busy and productive year – but with fewer acronyms.:)
Michael McDonnell: It has been a busy but rewarding year after taking on the role of Chair of History in January. Much of my energy has been spent learning the ropes, understanding how the University works, and figuring out how we might be able to make it work better. The best part of the job, however, has been learning much more about the varied and diverse work of my terrific colleagues in History, and getting to know more and more students through the various events and talks at which we’ve come together – as well as recent graduates. In between a fairly demanding schedule of meetings and events, I’ve managed to make some progress on a couple of research projects, including a three-part podcast series on Indigenous portraiture and empire with colleague Kate Fullagar, and a co-edited three-volume Cambridge History of the American Revolution, both of which should be out next year. I did not make as much progress on the monograph on Revolutionary War Memoirs as I would have liked, in part because I have been getting too interested in new research projects with colleagues in the School and beyond – on refugee history, and on working with community organisations to support their history-making. I’ve also been working closely with one of our amazing former students, Darcy Campbell, to write some scholarly articles about the unit History Beyond the Classroom, andwas very happy to be involved in the successful nomination of colleagues in History for a Faculty Student Success Award, and a Vice Chancellor’s award for Supporting the Student Experience. Finally, and as always, I’ve enjoyed being involved in the Social Inclusion program which this year has focused on supporting History Extension high school students in diverse, low-ses and regional/rural schools. It is a pleasure to work alongside colleagues Thomas Café, Niro Kandasamy, and James Findlay and our great volunteer student mentors to support the many wonderful teachers and students who are part of the program.
Kirsten McKenzie – First semester was an intense teaching experience with a new Honours seminar and teaming up with John Gagné for our new core third year unit, HSTY3903 History and Historians. That was a wild ride with timetabling and other challenges including the last gasp of RE/CC teaching. There were times when I didn’t think we could make it work, but watching such a large cohort of students come up with outstanding projects and reading the wonderfully warm responses we got in student evaluations made it all worthwhile. Second semester saw five months overseas on sabbatical leave – a very welcome opportunity to get stuck into archives again, mostly in Scotland. Reading through an extraordinary collection of family documents from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century letter by letter was like being plunged into an undigested version of War and Peace or Vanity Fair as viewed through the lens of Edward Said. With photography forbidden I came away with more than 300 000 words of transcription. Now I face the challenge of securing permission to use the material. Debate over the legacy of empire in Britain has made these questions more than usually politically fraught. Never one to accumulate annual leave, I also managed to fit in some close encounters with lions and elephants on safari, reconnected with in-laws in the mountains of Sicily and scrubbed up in a public bath built in 1556. As the year draws to the close I’m in the last stages of two books that will come out with Cambridge University Press next year – copyediting one and preparing another for final submission. I’m looking forward to new challenges next year when I take over as Director of the Vere Gordon Childe Centre for the study of humanity through time.
Jess Melvin: Together with my co-editors Annie Pohlman and Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem, I am very pleased that our new book Resisting Indonesia’s Culture of Impunity: Aceh’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been published by ANU Press. This book examines the role of Indonesia’s first truth and reconciliation commission- The Aceh Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or KKR Aceh- in investigating and redressing the extensive human rights violations committed during three decades of brutal separatist conflict (1976-2005) in the province of Aceh. Most excitingly, each chapter has been written by a team of authors, composed predominantly of commissioners and staff from the KKR itself, members of key civil society organisations in Aceh and Jakarta and academics. In other news, my family and I were adopted by a new kitten, Hunter. His favourite activity is annoying our two other cats. He also likes to eat durian.
Andres Rodriguez: Andres has enjoyed being on Long Service Leave after working for ten years at USYD. He also has enjoyed explaining to his non-Aussie friends what this actually means. He became an Aussie citizen along with his family, but still not quite appreciating the joys of eating Vegemite. Earlier this year Andres hit the archives at the National Library of Australia working with its Chinese language materials as part of his new Burma Road project. He then travelled to London and worked at the British Library – and left the day the library system came under a ransomware attack. He is also feeling more ‘senior’ this year.
Hélène Sirantoine: How to sum up another busy year?!? I guess for me 2023 has been most of all a constant ‘lost in translation’ experience. Among other things, I’ve finally published a book chapter (‘When being king was not enough: imperatores in medieval Iberia’, freely available here) that quickly summarises for an English audience the contents of my 2012 French-language monograph on medieval imperial Spanish experiments (Imperator Hispaniae: Les idéologies impériales dans le royaume de León, Casa de Velázquez). I’ve got an article accepted in the French journal Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, that explores the Latin narration of the eighth-century Islamic conquest of Spain by the twelfth-century English cleric Ralph the Black. All the while I’ve been trying to remember my Spanish grammar, co-drafting with a Catalan colleague a Latin edition, translation into Castilian, and Spanish commentary of the chronicle composed by Genoese consul Caffaro di Rustico about the conquest of Andalusí coastal towns of Almería and Tortosa in 1147-1148 by an alliance of Castilian, Genoese and Catalan terrestrial and naval forces. Needless to say, ya no sé ahora dans quel monde (et langue!) je vis…
This November the History discipline celebrated the successful launch of the 2024 History Extension Mentoring Program, a key component of our Social Inclusion Program (click through for more info). More information about the program is available. Building on the success of our collaboration with Corowa High last year, we expanded our reach with a conscious effort to support regional and rural schools. As a result, we welcomed three new partners from regional NSW: Bomaderry High, Hastings Secondary College, and Gloucester High School. In addition to these new participants, we had two metropolitan returnees—Cecil Hills High and Canley Vale High. Following our successful launch, we are excited to see how a diverse range of interests and perspectives will develop into amazing History Extension projects.
This year we hosted three separate launch days to meet the various needs of our schools. We kicked off on November 16th with the Cecil Hills students and their enthusiastic teacher, Joshua Banks, coming to the University of Sydney campus. The students met their mentors, explored classic campus spots, and engaged in unstructured discussions with our academic team. On November 22nd, we conducted a Zoom launch with two of our new regional schools, Gloucester and Hastings, located along the Central and Northern NSW Coasts, respectively. Special thanks must go to the teachers Skye Sylvester and Lucy Neville for their hard work and initiative in bringing their students to our program! Our final launch on November 30th brought together Canley Vale and another new partner, Bomaderry High School, from the NSW South Coast. This third session went well despite the challenges posed by end-of-term assessments. We want to acknowledge the flexibility and dedication of each school’s teachers, Sue Neferis and Natalie Langley, who were critical in helping this session go ahead.
All three launches were attended by our academic team—Michael McDonnell, Niro Kandasamy, and James Findlay—who met the students, teachers, and our wonderful batch of mentors. James and Niro delivered a helpful presentation for the extension students titled ‘Turning Interests into Questions,’ exploring the surprisingly difficult process of transforming general interest into a tight question for historical interrogation. After these presentations, we broke the mentors off with their mentees, who reported many productive and friendly conversations. They exchanged emails and shared resources. Now, we look forward to seeing what they will achieve in the coming months!
We have several sessions moving forward, the next of which is scheduled for February in the new year. Until then, we want to express our gratitude to everyone involved in helping launch the program this year! Most importantly, we want to thank this year’s cohort of mentors for the enthusiasm, intelligence, and compassion they have brought to the program so far.
We look forward to seeing you all in the new year!
History on Wednesday
