Melbourne's State Library of Victoria – the third most popular library in the world! – is being threatened with cuts to staff and facilities. Add your name to the petition to save jobs and resources www.change.org/p/save-the-s...

I am heavily invested in handwriting & historical documents. Historians need to weigh carefully whether time spent transcribing documents is “wasted,” or whether it actually helps thought processes & skills. This is not to say these tools should not be used. Just consider the cost of “time saved.”

this Mushroom Diaries book is honestly make me think a little differently of three writers i have always really appreciated

I’m delighted to share that my first journal article has been published in the special issue 'Labour Archives and Methodologies' of Labour History. Honoured to have this piece included alongside such distinguished work: doi.org/10.3828/labo...

Please read this & help save the State Library of Victoria, entering its 'now fully trashed' era. I didn't go to uni - for me the Library was higher education in later life, research for my job, a revelation about what ordinary people could have access to. It changed my life. Not just a building.

The State Library of Victoria’s ‘major’ proposed cuts include slashing the number of reference librarians and free computers for public access. Some staff are shocked.

I'm against pardoning turkeys because it implies that we are eating them as a punishment for their crimes instead of our own

#Victorians! Our State Library is being trashed by a series of executives with no experience or understanding of public collections. Many hired as 'temps' without full process, who then caused scandals & exodus of specialist & librarian staff: a full wreck looms. www.theage.com.au/national/vic...

Useful thing for Aussie people juggling jobs: the Fair Work Ombudsman has an app called Record My Hours which doesn't store your data (unlike all the other freelancer type apps/programs out there) and lets you track actual hours worked in a way that is lowkey and doesn't add too much cognitive load.

Catriona Menzies-Pike on ‘critical provincialism’: ‘I’d advocate for a set of reading practices that stay close to the contours of place and culture, that let themselves be informed by topography and history’. Yes!

Very excited to see my article on ghosts in early modern London published with Urban History! And it's open access! cambridge.org/core/journal...

Happy to share my new book 'Quiet Protest: A New History of Activism during the Vietnam War', which will be published by UNSW Press on 1 April 2026.

Congratulations to Mary Blight (Curtin), runner up of the 2025 Ken Inglis Prize for the best paper presented by a postgrad at the AHA conference. Read the judges’ citation below. Thanks to all who submitted entries, to our two judges, and to Taylor & Francis for their ongoing support of this prize.

Congratulations to Zoe Smith (ANU), winner of the 2025 Ken Inglis Prize for the best paper presented by a postgrad at the annual AHA conference @austhistassoc.bsky.social Thanks to Taylor & Francis @tandfonline.bsky.social for supporting the prize. Read the judges’ citation below

Know anyone who would want to come work with me? 1 year position for someone with a HASS background (don’t need to be a programmer), working on a tool to search historical documents like colonial Hansard. unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/UoM_Ex...

Check out @racheljcollett.bsky.social's fantastic article on the Women's Liberation Movement in Merseyside, and radical regionalism, in the latest issue of Tribune - out today!

Brancepeth (est. 1856, Wainuioru) A name to conjure with in NZ library history. The late Lydia Wevers wrote a wonderful book about the sheep station library, now preserved at Victoria University of Wellington.

Richly illustrated and deeply researched, Charlotte Macdonald's 'Garrison World' reveals how empire shaped lives in 19th-century Aotearoa and beyond. Out now in bookshops and on the BWB website. www.bwb.co.nz/books/garrison... #NZHistory #GarrisonWorld

Nice to see this forum on Ian Tyrrell's work in AJAH. It was a privilege to offer thoughts about an approach to the past that has shaped my own and to learn from other fantastic scholars' responses to Ian's writing on women, temperance, and transnational activism: www.jstor.org/stable/48844....

Nice to see this forum on Ian Tyrrell's work in AJAH. It was a privilege to offer thoughts about an approach to the past that has shaped my own and to learn from other fantastic scholars' responses to Ian's writing on women, temperance, and transnational activism: www.jstor.org/stable/48844....

Historian Charlotte Macdonald joins Kathryn Ryan on RNZ Nine to Noon to discuss her major new history, 'Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and across the British Empire'. Listen here: www.rnz.co.nz/national/progr... 📘 Pick up your copy at a local bookshop today!

And delighted now to share this new research article by Charlotte Legg and me that explores settler colonial identities, shared affinities, racial politics and transimperial forms of whiteness in New Caledonia and Australia in the early 20th century. Open access: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Sie hat so viel Wichtiges geleistet. Möge sie nun in Frieden ruhen. Gisela Bock, 1942-2025.

Some of you may be interested in this symposium on 'truth-telling' (in its many guises) being held at the University of Melbourne this week. Students and mob can attend for free, Unimelb staff get a 20% discount, and unwaged scholars get a 75% discount. I will be there for some of Friday's sessions!

Thrilled to see this introduction by me and Charlotte Ann Legg to our special issue on "Connected Histories of Empire: France, Britain & the Pacific" is now out and in open access. The rest of our special issue – with a fantastic array of articles – will be out soon! @journalpacifichist.bsky.social

My next book, The Women who Clothed the Stuart Queens, has a cover!!! And a preorder link!! Yippee! www.bloomsbury.com/au/women-who...

DEADLINE EXTENSION A prize of AUD $1,000 will be awarded at the 2025 Pacific History Association Conference for the winner of the Gunson Essay Prize Competition. Now due 14 November 2025 (23:59pm, Australian Eastern Daylight time). See attached image for guidelines.

No memento mori more effective than needing to scroll ever longer to select your birth year.

A film you’ve seen more than 7 times with a gif.

Amanda Harris @amaharrisusyd.bsky.social reviews ‘The Wild Australia Show: The Story of an Aboriginal Performance Troupe and Its Afterlives’ by Paul Memmott, Maria Nugent, Michael Aird, Lindy Allen, Chantal Knowles and Jonathan Richards. @anupress.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

"Notable Tree" sign being swallowed by notable tree

Our Nov issue is up, guest ed is Matt Fitzpatrick @kilderbenhauser.bsky.social it’s devoted to Anglo-German relations in Australasia. It’s also the final issue for outgoing eds Tim Rowse & Fiona Paisley–thanks for your excellent stewardship these last four years www.tandfonline.com/toc/rahs20/5...

Congratulations to AHA member Annemarie McLaren for the publication of her new book "Aboriginal-Colonial Exchanges in New South Wales 1800—1835: When the Strangers Came to Stay"! Grab a copy at the link: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!

Fly on, Jack DeJohnette. 💐🕊️🤲🏾 photo (by me) backstage at Jazz @ Lincoln Center, Nov 2, 2019

A fascinating and valuable new resource on the history of women’s trade unionism. sslh.org.uk/2025/10/26/b...

Charlotte Macdonald joins Mihingarangi Forbes on RNZ’s Saturday Morning to discuss forthcoming book ‘Garrison World’ and the history of the Great South Road. 🎧 Listen here: www.rnz.co.nz/national/progr...

Terrific story - 17,000 photographs taken by tailor & amateur photographer Allan Doney have been returned to Bendigo. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Thanks @uncommonsenseradio.bsky.social @3rrrfm.bsky.social for a wonderful interview this week about our new book 'Migrants, Television & Australian Stories'. Listen back here from 2hrs19mins: www.rrr.org.au/explore/prog...

New review essay by Deirdre Coleman explores "Pleasure and Pain in the Pacific" - essential insights into current Pacific historical scholarship. Journal of Pacific History 60(3) DOI: 10.1080/00223344.2025.2500500 #PacificStudies #AcademicReview

So I submitted the complete manuscript of my new book to the publisher. Hope it'll be out in the world late next year. It's about why Australia's role as an overseas coloniser was strikingly obvious to all and sundry till the 1970s, then was abruptly (and conveniently) forgotten.

'A former deputy head of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, McInerney has also argued the White Australia Policy did not go far enough and that white Australians may need to live in separate neighbourhoods as a form of “tactical retreat”.' www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

Important research here from Joel Barnes tracing the origins of philanthropic wealth in Australia. How should institutions reckon with these legacies? theconversation.com/the-dixson-f...

In our latest blog Margaret Allen reflects on an exhibition and research project exploring the academic working lives of women in South Australia since 1970. #UniversityofAdelaide #WiseandWonderfulWomen Find it here: www.auswhn.com.au/blog/wise-an...

Happy International Translation Day! Here’s part of my translation manifesto, which can be found in full at the end of Fair: The Life-Art of Translation. (Written out in replies)

What happens when a historian gets curious in the archive? Well, records like this Uni of Melb Women's Admission documents (1869-1887) come into view. This collection includes correspondence and documents regarding admissions and matriculation policy and lists of women attendees and graduates.

I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife.

I'm excited to be speaking at the Lines in the Sand festival in Maryborough in October! This talk draws on my Camera Obscura journal article about Mary Poppins and The Suffrage Postcard Project, a digital archive of women's suffrage postcards. Find out more ⬇️ www.eventbrite.com.au/e/lines-in-t...

The SLV is digitising thousands of photos of streetscapes around Victoria created by the Committee for Urban Action in the 1970s. Here's some from Fitzroy: https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/discovery/search?query=series,exact,Committee%20for%20Urban%20Action%20Collection.%20Photographic%20survey […]

The Government's controversial voting law will result in a 411% increase in the number of votes being thrown out, according to the Electoral Commission. www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360...