Advertise on podcast: History Lab

In this bonus episode, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak speaks with Rob Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk, about the international network's work protecting the human rights of threatened scholars and defending academic freedom. Founded in 1999 at the University of Chicago by a group of academics moved by a radio interview with an exiled scholar, Scholars at Risk now spans more than 650 member institutions in over 40 countries. Quinn traces how the organisation's work has grown from offering individual fellowships to campaigning against wrongful imprisonment, monitoring attacks on higher education, and building international legal standards for academic freedom. The conversation connects directly to Vrdoljak's own research: an Australian Research Council-funded project on the European émigré lawyers who fled fascism in the 1930s and 40s and found refuge in Australia, soon to be released as the podcast series Emergency Exit. Quinn and Vrdoljak discuss the parallels between that earlier era and today's, the crucial distinction between academic freedom and free speech, and the stories of scholars including Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, imprisoned for defending women protesting Iran's mandatory hijab laws, whose cases show what is at stake when that freedom is denied. Voices Ana Filipa Vrdoljak is UTS Professor of Law and the UNESCO Chair in International Law and Cultural Heritage. She is co-coordinator of the UNESCO-UNITWIN Network on Culture in Emergencies. Robert Quinn is Executive Director of Scholars at Risk. He hosts the Free to Think podcast. Further reading and listening 'Fighting to Protect - and Define - Academic Freedom' by Robert Quinn Find out about the work of Scholars at Risk and how you can contribute here. To listen to the ‘Free to Think’ podcast link through here. Credits This episode was recorded on Gadigal Land, in Sydney. It was recorded by Siobhan Moylan and edited by BLAH. Emergency Exit was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council. History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Dr Sarah Gilbert.

In this bonus episode, employment and human rights lawyer Josh Bornstein talks with Katherine Biber about the family history that shaped his career. Bornstein's grandparents left Poland in 1933 hoping to escape, finally securing passage to Melbourne in 1938, only for his grandmother to be hospitalised under a Nazi doctor and his grandfather interrogated by German police during a stopover before they could continue the journey. Growing up in a politically engaged household — his mother a union official, his father a journalist and, for a time, a politician — Bornstein built a career defending workers and refugees against far more powerful opponents, including the Transport Workers Union's case against Qantas, which he took to a seven nil victory in the High Court and more than $200 million in combined compensation and penalties. The conversation also turns to the language used to describe how governments treat refugees. Bornstein pushes back on the term "bureaucratic violence," arguing that responsibility lies with political decisions rather than the public service, drawing on his experience acting for Shayan Badraie, the young Iranian refugee whom then immigration minister Philip Ruddock refused to refer to as anything other than "it." He also reflects on the legacy of the Tampa election, the use of refugee policy as a political weapon since, and his recent writing on international law and Israel's obligations under the ICJ's provisional measures order in the genocide case. Voices Josh Bornstein is a lawyer who specialises in employment and labour relations law, and author of the book, Working for the Brand: how corporations are destroying free speech (Scribe, 2024). Josh’s grandparents fled Poland, arriving in Australia in 1938. Katherine Biber is a legal scholar, criminologist and historian and Professor of Law at UTS. Her latest book is The Last Outlaws (Simon & Schuster Australia, 2025). Her podcast of the same name is featured on History Lab. Credits This special History Lab series was made on Gadigal land, in Sydney. It was edited and mixed by BLAH. Emergency Exit was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council. History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

In the aftermath of World War II, a charismatic Estonian man named Ilmar Tammelo arrived in Australia as one of more than 170,000 in the Displaced Persons Scheme. Trained as a lawyer and shaped by the upheavals of Soviet and Nazi occupation, Tammelo was assigned to manual labour in regional Australia, a condition of his participation in the DP scheme. A chance encounter brought him into the company of the leading legal theorist, Julius Stone, and Tammelo entered a small but influential circle of European émigré thinkers. Together, they challenged the narrow traditions of Australian legal education, introducing new ideas about law, justice, and society. Through Tammelo’s story and those of his contemporaries, the episode reveals both the constraints of bureaucratic systems and the resilience of those who navigated them, forging intellectual and cultural communities in an often unwelcoming environment. VoicesJosh Bornstein is a lawyer who specialises in employment and labour relations law, and author of the book, Working for the Brand: how corporations are destroying free speech (Scribe, 2024). Josh’s grandparents fled Poland, arriving in Australia in 1938. Katherine Biber is a legal scholar, criminologist and historian and Professor of Law at UTS. Her latest book is The Last Outlaws (Simon & Schuster Australia, 2025). Her podcast of the same name is featured on History Lab. The voice of Ilmar Tammelo is performed by Professor Rain Liivoja and Otto Bondy by Michael Stockenhuber. Paul McCartan voiced the Australian government officials. CreditsThis special History Lab series was made on Gadigal land, in Sydney. Writer and Producer: Olivia Rosenman Collaborating scholars: Katherine Biber, Sara Dehm, and Ana Filipa Vrdoljak Additional research: Eloise Chandler Sound design and audio engineering: Melissa May Thank you to everyone we interviewed and all the voice actors for this episode: Terry Kass, Michael Kirby, Anthony Blackshield, Arthur Glass, Eureka Henrick, Rain Livoja, Paul McCartan, and Michael Stockenhuber. Special thank you to Danny Mulheron, the grandson of Richard Fuchs, for allowing us to use his grandfather’s music in this episode. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Emergency Exit was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council. History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

Leonhard Adam’s life was twice transformed by bureaucratic categories. Declared a “non-Aryan” by Nazi rules, he was forced out of his career and from his home in Germany. He fled to England in search of safety, only to be classified as an “enemy alien”, a category formed in panicked haste as Europe descended into war. Adam was swept up in a wave of mass internment that made little distinction between refugees and real threats. From there, his world shrank to barbed wire and bureaucracy. Arrested, detained, and then deported on the infamous HMT Dunera, Adam was transported across the world to an internment camp in rural Australia. Yet even within the confines of captivity, Adam refused to be defined by the labels imposed on him. He taught, lectured, and helped build a vibrant intellectual community among fellow internees. Through Adam’s extraordinary journey, this episode reveals how abstract legal categories can upend lives and how, even in the harshest conditions, people resist, adapt, and hold onto their humanity. VoicesJosh Bornstein is a lawyer who specialises in employment and labour relations law, and author of the book, Working for the Brand: how corporations are destroying free speech (Scribe, 2024). Josh’s grandparents fled Poland, arriving in Australia in 1938. Katherine Biber is a legal scholar, criminologist and historian and Professor of Law at UTS. Her latest book is The Last Outlaws (Simon & Schuster Australia, 2025). Her podcast of the same name is featured on History Lab. Sara Dehm is Associate Professor of Law at UTS, where she teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, legal history, international migration and refugee law, and the law of international organisations. She is also a co-convener of the advocacy network Academics for Refugees. Ana Filipa Vrdoljak is UTS Professor of Law and the UNESCO Chair in International Law and Cultural Heritage. She is co-coordinator of the UNESCO-UNITWIN Network on Culture in Emergencies. The voice of Leonherd Adam was performed by Thorsten Kostulski, Carl Wehner by Andreas Bork, Robert Ranulph Marett by Alistair Senior, and Esther Simpson by Toni Johnson. Winston Churchill's voice was generated by a bot. Olivia Rosenman reads the news articles. CreditsThis special History Lab series was made on Gadigal land, in Sydney. Writer and Producer: Olivia Rosenman Collaborating scholars: Katherine Biber, Sara Dehm, and Ana Filipa Vrdoljak Additional research: Eloise Chandler Sound design and audio engineering: Melissa May Thank you to everyone we interviewed and all the voice actors for this episode. Mary-Clare Adam, Andreas Bork, Alistair Senior, Toni Johnson, and Thorsten Kostulski who also provided invaluable assistance as a talent scout. The music in this episode included recordings of the Dunera Mass, composed by Max-Peter Meyer on the ship as it sailed for Australia. It was performed by the Luminescence Chamber Singers and The Oriana Chorale, directed by Roland Peelman A.M. with sound engineering and production Jim Atkins. It was recorded at the Wesley Music Centre Chapel in Canberra in 2024 with the support of Creative Australia. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Emergency Exit was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council. History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

The Nazi rise to power looms over Europe in the 1930s, causing an exodus of emigrants seeking refuge from persecution. But fleeing fascism involves contending with the arcane - and often arbitrary - immigration systems of other countries who turn a blind eye to the unfolding crisis. Some escape; most do not. In Australia, a woman named Camilla Wedgwood works tirelessly, trying to help refugees navigate the requirements for would-be immigrants. Through her letters, archival records and personal stories, we meet individuals like German architect Richard Fuchs and Austrian lawyer Eduard Korten, whose futures were shaped by bureaucratic rules about money, age, profession and race. The episode reveals how seemingly neutral systems such as immigration permits, professional admissions and citizenship rules, can shape lives in profound and unequal ways. What happens when rigid categories fail to reflect the complexity of human lives? How do lawyers - who are pivotal in forming bureaucratic rules - respond when they become the victims of them? Through the stories of real people whose survival hinged on bureaucratic decisions, this podcast introduces the concept of bureaucratic violence: a quiet but devastating force that determines who is allowed to belong, and who is left behind. VoicesJosh Bornstein is a lawyer who specialises in employment and labour relations law, and author of the book, Working for the Brand: how corporations are destroying free speech (Scribe, 2024). Josh’s grandparents fled Poland, arriving in Australia in 1938. Katherine Biber is a legal scholar, criminologist and historian and Professor of Law at UTS. Her latest book is The Last Outlaws (Simon & Schuster Australia, 2025). Her podcast of the same name is featured on History Lab. Sara Dehm is Associate Professor of Law at UTS, where she teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, legal history, international migration and refugee law, and the law of international organisations. She is also a co-convener of the advocacy network Academics for Refugees. Camilla Wedgewood is voiced by Phoebe Borwick, Josiah Wedgewood by Jonty Claypole, Edward Korten by Bernhard Schmitz, Margaret Hay by Rosa Saladino and Doc Evatt by Gideon Haigh. The voices of Colonel TW White, CH Herbert and the Australian government official were all performed by Paul McCartan. Olivia Rosenman reads the news articles. CreditsThis special History Lab series was made on Gadigal land, in Sydney. Writer and Producer: Olivia Rosenman Collaborating scholars: Katherine Biber, Sara Dehm, and Ana Filipa Vrdoljak Additional research: Eloise Chandler Sound design and audio engineering: Melissa May Thank you to everyone we interviewed and all the voice actors for this episode. Dr. Eureka Henrich, Justice Hament Dhanji, Professor Steve Hochstadt, Carina Camamile, Phoebe Borwick, Gideon Haigh, Bernhard Schmitz, Jonty Claypole, Rosa Saladino, and Paul McCartan. Special thank you to Danny Mulheron, the grandson of Richard Fuchs, for allowing us to use his grandfather’s music throughout this episode. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Emergency Exit was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council. History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

Coming October 1st - this special History Lab series explores the stories of European refugees who escaped Nazi persecution, only to confront new forms of exclusion through Australia’s legal and bureaucratic systems. Hosted by lawyer Josh Bornstein, with UTS researchers Katherine Biber, Sara Dehm and Ana Filipa Vrdoljak.

How do you tell the story of a "warrior" without flattening him into myth? Associate Professor Delia Falconer talks with historian Dr Naomi Parry Duncan about her new biography of Musquito — a warrior born around Port Jackson who lived through the first shockwaves of British invasion, was exiled to Norfolk Island, and ultimately met his end in Van Diemen's Land. Parry Duncan set out to tell his full, complicated story — not the "last stand" myth historians have leaned on for two centuries, but a life full of relationships, movement, and agency, drawn only from sources written at the time. The conversation follows Musquito's path from Parramatta to Norfolk Island's coral stone and on to Tasmania's dolerite country, and traces the surprising thread that runs alongside it: Parry Duncan's discovery that her own convict ancestors were caught up in his story, their land grant sitting almost on top of the spot where Musquito was captured. It's a conversation about writing history that holds violence and beauty at once — and about what's owed to a story that's been misused for so long. This episode was recorded live at Gleebooks. Voices Dr Naomi Parry Duncan is a professional historian and president of the History Council of NSW, as well as a senior research officer with the Indigenous Land and Justice Research Group at UNSW. She holds adjunct roles at Western Sydney University and the University of Tasmania and was the 2022 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellow. She was lead writer for the NSW Centenary of Anzac publication New South Wales and the Great War (2016). Associate Professor Delia Falconer is the author of two novels (The Service of Clouds and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers) and two works of nonfiction (Sydney and Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss), which have been shortlisted for national and international awards across the categories of fiction, nonfiction, innovation, biography, history and research. She is the editor of three cohort-defining collections: The Best Australian Stories 2008, The Best Australian Stories 2009 and The Penguin Book of the Road. Delia's short stories and essays have been widely anthologised, including in the landmark Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories. Delia teaches creative writing at UTS. Further reading Musquito: the real story of a legendary colonial warrior by Naomi Parry Duncan is published by Allen & Unwin. A review of Musquito by Tim Rowse for The Conversation. A review of Musquito by Kate Fullagar for Inside Story. Credits This episode of History Lab was recorded on Gadigal Land, Sydney, at Gleebooks. For more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page. Edited and mixed by Daniel Wiggins. History Lab is brought to you by the Australian Centre for Public History and UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

Wikipedia doesn't set out to play favourites. But when a made-up Melbourne suburb has more history than real Australian places, something is shaping what gets written. Who - or what - decides which Australian places matter on Wikipedia? Hosts Heather Ford and Francesca Sidoti go looking, through a map of 35,000 places, a street corner in Penrith, and a fight over one island's name. How is Wikipedia biased, and why? The answer will surprise you. This episode comes to History Lab from All That We Touch, a brand new Impact Studios podcast about the entangled relationships between humans, technology, nature and politics. Its inaugural takes a close look at Wikipedia - what it knows, and how it shapes what we know. Subscribe or follow All That We Touch to hear more. VoicesHeather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press. Dr Francesca Sidoti is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the ARC Discovery project ‘Wikipedia and the nation’s story: towards equity in knowledge production’ in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dr Michael Falk is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Studies at the University of Melbourne, and is a computational literary scholar, data scientist, speaker and writer. In all his work, he aims to combine the creativity of the arts with the rigour and precision of data science. Research linksAustralian places and WikipediaMap of Australian places on Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025) Map showing Edit intensity of Australian place articles: English Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025) Full report: How Australian places are represented on Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025) We analysed 35,000 Wikipedia entries about Australian places. Some of them sanitise history (The Conversation: 2024) Erinsborough Wikipedia Page Penrith Wikipedia page K'gari Wikipedia page Bias and WikipediaCan History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past by Roy Rosenzweig (The Journal of American History Volume 2006) Wikipedia's known unknowns (The Guardian 2009) The earliest geographical analyses of Wikipedia’s geographical biases is described Professor Mark Graham. ‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia’s infrastructure and the gender gap ( Social Studies of Science 2017) How Wikipedia’s infrastructure introduces new and less visible sources of gender disparity, by Heather Ford and Judy Wajcman. Who Gets To Be Notable And Who Doesn't: Gender Bias On Wiki (NPR All Things Considered 2021) On Wikipedia, gender inequality is hiding in plain sight. Of more than a million and a half biographies - that's on the English-language version - fewer than 19% are about women. A recent study by Francesca Tripodi brings some new insight into why that is. Demographic disparity in Wikipedia coverage: a global perspective (EPJ Data Sci. 2025)Even though people identifying as female and non-binary genders have been better represented in terms of the number of Wikipedia language editions over time, and they are currently better covered than males, current global coverage of people on Wikipedia still shows disparities in both gender and geographical location of biographical subjects in various dimensions. Wikipedia editorsWho is contributing to Wikimedia projects? (Wikimedia Foundation, nd) The Wikipedia “Change the Stats” page that collates research into the Wikipedia editor base as a baseline for increasing the diversity of Wikipedia editors. Community Insights Report (Wikimedia Foundation, 2020) A survey with 2500 Wikimedians looking at their demographics, social and technological experiences. Findings from the survey included: Wikimedia contributors are 87% male. Almost half live in Europe and one-fifth in Northern America, as compared to 9.7% and 4.8% of the global population.Fewer than 1% of Wikipedia’s editor base in the U.S. identify as Black or African American.Although women were still markedly underrepresented among contributors, there was a modest increase in women contributors between 2019 (11.5%) and 2020 (15.0%). Further reading“Finding Eliza: power and colonial storytelling” by Larissa Behrendt (2016) “Finding Eliza” exhibition at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery until 16 August 2026 ClipsJimmy Wales on bias: Lex Fridman podcast 19 June 2023 Comedian Guy Williams on visiting Rottnest Island Herbs French Letter World Heritage Fraser Island officially restored to Indigenous name, K'gari, supported by public (ABC News 7 June 2023) CreditsThe executive producer of this series is Heather Ford. The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke. Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti. Story consultant is Rachael Cusick. Sound by John Jacobs. Thanks for feedback from Sarah Gilbert, Regina Botros, Celine Teo-Blockey, Siobhan Moylan, Lachlan A Court, Zlata Maltceva, Rosa Ellen, and Kate Lawrence. All That We Touch artwork by Alexandra Morris. Episode tiles by Jane Curtis. Bell music composition by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary. Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert. It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia. wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’. Find out more at wikihistories.net TranscriptsWikipedia and Australia: the bias in the map Transcript Word doc Wikipedia and Australia: the bias in the map Transcript PDF

Environmental history in Australia has moved from the margins to something close to the centre of the discipline — but the path there was longer and less obvious than it might appear. Jarrod Hore and Nancy Cushing map that path from different vantage points. Hore came of age as a scholar inside the field; Cushing arrived at it gradually, via urban history, historical geography, and a childhood in Nova Scotia that made her attentive to the materialities of place. They trace the field’s prehistory through Keith Hancock and the historical geographers, and its institutional emergence through the Green Stream at the 2016 AHA conference in Ballarat, which gave environmental historians in Australia a genuine community for the first time. The conversation turns on the field’s core contribution: refusing the false separation of humans from the environments they inhabit, and refusing equally the separation between the humanities and the sciences. VoicesJarrod Hore is a Scientia Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales. His research covers landscape photography, geology, and commodity histories in settler colonies. His first book is Visions of Nature (2022). Nancy Cushing is an Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle, where she recently marked thirty years. She is a past Coral Thomas Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales and has published widely on human-animal relations in Australia. CreditsRecorded and edited by Lachlan D’Acourt. Executive producers: Michelle Arrow and Kate Fullagar. Executive producer, Impact Studios: Sarah Gilbert. History Lab is made by UTS Impact Studios and the Australian Centre for Public History. Field Notes is made in collaboration with the Australian Historical Association. Further ReadingKatie Holmes, Andrea Gaynor and Ruth Morgan, “Doing Environmental History in Urgent Times,” History Australia (2020)Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth (2011)Keith Hancock, Discovering Monaro (1977)Tom Griffiths, "Discovering Hancock: the journey to Monaro" (1999)

In this episode of Field Notes, historians Sophie Loy-Wilson and Mei-fen Kuo trace their paths into Chinese Australian history — one drawn by questions of racism and resistance, the other by the discovery of long-neglected Chinese-language newspapers and Qing Dynasty consular records. They discuss the ethical challenges of community history, the archival work required to recover women’s lives, and a question that has shadowed Chinese communities in Australia across two centuries: first, who counts as Australian, and then, after the Second World War, which China do you belong to? The conversation is as much personal as scholarly. Kuo reflects on growing up in Taiwan at the end of martial law, a grandmother whose name will never appear in any archive, and the journey from Irish nationalism to Chinese Australian history. Loy-Wilson recalls being an eleven-year-old in Beijing when her father pointed to the crowds on Chang’an Avenue and said, everyone under forty survived the Cultural Revolution. VoicesSophie Loy-Wilson is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on the Chinese Australian diaspora and the politics of race and labour. Her current book project examines Chinese men during the gold rushes of the 1850s to 1880s. Mei-fen Kuo is a historian at Macquarie University specialising in Chinese Australian and Taiwanese migration history. Her archival discoveries include consular records from the Qing Dynasty period held in Melbourne’s Chinatown. Her forthcoming book traces the political life of a Taiwanese Australian intellectual and his engagement with democracy movements across the Asia-Pacific. CreditsRecorded and edited by Lachlan D’Acourt. Executive producers: Michelle Arrow and Kate Fullagar. Executive producer, Impact Studios: Sarah Gilbert. History Lab is made by UTS Impact Studios and the Australian Centre for Public History. Field Notes is made in collaboration with the Australian Historical Association. Further ReadingJohn Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (2007)Cathy May, Top Sawyers: Chinese in Cairns 1870s–1920s (1984)

Military history in Australia carries a weight that few other subfields do — it sits at the intersection of popular memory, national identity, and institutional commemoration in ways that make it both unusually accessible and unusually prone to distortion. Maggie Hutchison and Tom Rogers make a case for what serious military history looks like. It demands an active voice — soldiers don’t “lay down their lives”; they are killed by someone, with something, for reasons that can be named. And it insists on the connections between home front and battlefield that have too often been treated as separate stories. The conversation includes the Australian War Memorial’s 2022 decision to reverse its long-standing position about the frontier wars — a change, Rogers argues, that came directly from decades of academic research, not popular opinion. They discuss the centenary wave and its aftermath, the digitisation of First World War records, and the way genealogy pulls people into military history and then requires them to understand the broader context. VoicesMaggie Hutchison is a Senior Lecturer in History at UNSW Canberra. Her research covers war art, commemoration, and the long-term costs of military service. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary project on veteran suicide. Tom Rogers is a historian in the Military History section at the Australian War Memorial. His research focuses on the colonial period and the frontier wars. He is currently working on soldiers’ letters published in newspapers during the South African War. CreditsRecorded and edited by Lachlan D’Acourt. Executive producers: Michelle Arrow and Kate Fullagar. Executive producer, Impact Studios: Sarah Gilbert. History Lab is made by UTS Impact Studios and the Australian Centre for Public History. Field Notes is made in collaboration with the Australian Historical Association. Further ReadingJoan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (2013)Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (2019)Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star (1984)Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (1996)

What does decolonisation mean as a field of historical inquiry — and what does it demand of the historians who work in it? Jon Piccini and Angela Woollacott approach these questions from different generations and starting points. Woollacott came to postcolonial thinking through the new imperial history in 1990s American universities, where the field felt genuinely revolutionary. Piccini came through the study of 1960s transnational activism, and found his way to decolonisation proper only when a supervisor’s question stuck with him long enough to send him back to sources he thought he’d already exhausted. They discuss what a decolonial approach actually requires: taking positionality seriously, working across archives that are not equally preserved, and refusing to let the boundaries of the logo map define Australian history. The conversation moves through the historiography — Frantz Fanon, CLR James, the landmark work of Tracy Banivanua Mar on decolonisation as an oceanic movement — and into practical questions about how the history is made. Piccini describes working with Papua New Guinean archives and the irreducible privilege involved in that encounter, while Woollacott discusses the seminal work of Henry Reynolds and the influence of the Colonial Frontiers Massacres Map as presenting incontrovertible evidence of frontier violence. VoicesJon Piccini is a Senior Lecturer in History at Australian Catholic University in Brisbane/Meanjin. His work spans transnational activism, human rights history, and Australia’s colonial relationships in the Pacific. He is completing a book on Australia and decolonisation. Angela Woollacott is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the School of History at the Australian National University, on Ngunnawal Country. Her books include Settler Society in the Australian Colonies (2015) and a biography of Don Dunstan. Her current project examines Australians who shaped the intellectual and political challenge to colonialism in the mid-twentieth century. CreditsRecorded and edited by Lachlan D’Acourt. Executive producers: Michelle Arrow and Kate Fullagar. Executive producer, Impact Studios: Sarah Gilbert. History Lab is made by UTS Impact Studios and the Australian Centre for Public History. Field Notes is made in collaboration with the Australian Historical Association. Further ReadingTracy Banivanua Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific (2016)CLR James, The Black Jacobins (1938; rev. ed. 1963)Shannyn Palmer, Unmaking Angus Downs: Myth and History on a Central Australian Pastoral Station (2022) — Prime Minister’s History Prize winnerJessica Urwin, Contaminated Country (forthcoming, Melbourne University Press)Henry Reynolds, Looking from the North (2024)

Before social media, before streaming, before algorithms decided what you'd hear next, Sydney had the street press — and the street press had the Hopetoun Hotel. In this episode, State Library Fellow Dr Liz Giuffre takes us inside her archival forays into On the Street and Drum Media, two free weekly publications held in the State Library of NSW's collection that served as the first draft of Sydney's music history from the early 1980s to the early 2010s. Combing through 375 issues of On the Street and 685 issues of Drum Media, Giuffre reconstructed the full gig history of the Hoey — a 200-capacity pub in Surry Hills that somehow managed to be the centre of a very special universe. The numbers tell part of the story: 375 slots for live music in just the first decade, the majority free, Wednesday nights the busiest, genres and genders far more diverse than the "blokey pub rock" myth would have you believe. But archives only get you so far — the rest is memory, and this panel has plenty of it. From Machine Gun Fellatio forming almost by accident after a misprint in a gig listing, to Box the Jesuit's anatomically ambitious birthday cakes, to the gentleman's agreements between venue bookers that briefly kept Paul Kelly off the Hopetoun stage, the conversation ranges across what made the Hoey's ecosystem tick: the bands, the bookers, the barflies, the street press journos, Terry the Pieman, and Johnny's fish and chips next door. The panel also looks forward — at what's been lost to unaffordability and dispersal, what's quietly thriving in record stores and warehouse spaces and jewellery shops on Parramatta Road, and why culture, as one panellist puts it, always finds a way. Voices Dr Liz Giuffre is a Senior Lecturer in Communications at UTS, a music and arts journalist, and a fan. Her work has been published widely for academic and general audiences, and she is still an active commentator online and on radio via TheMusic, 2SER FM and ABC Radio Sydney. She was one of the Library’s Visiting Fellows in 2024. Her new book, Spirits of the Hoey, is a love letter to the iconic Hopetoun Hotel. Chit Chat von Loopin Stab is a filmmaker, lyricist, music producer, TV presenter, radio announcer, film score composer and gardener. He cowrote The Whitlams’ hit song ‘No Aphrodisiac’, which was voted number one on the Hottest 100 of 1997 and won the 1998 ARIA Award for Song of the Year. Chit Chat is also founding member, producer, manager, keyboardist and occasional vocalist for Machine Gun Fellatio, as well as a music TV presenter on Foxtel’s Max for 12 years. His score for the 2003 Australian crime film Getting Square won multiple awards. Chit Chat’s first band Vrag were regulars at the Hopetoun, as was Machine Gun Fellatio. Emily Collins is a seasoned music industry leader with deep expertise in strategy, policy and program development. Prior to her appointment as Head of Sound NSW, Emily served for eight years as the Managing Director of MusicNSW, where she played a pivotal role in strengthening the state’s contemporary music sector. Emily’s career began in major music festivals, including the Cockatoo Island Festival and the Great Escape Festival, before expanding into marketing roles at Underbelly Arts Festival, Sydney Writers’ Festival and Darwin Festival. A long-standing champion of the NSW music industry, she has been a prominent advocate for the sector and continues to support artists, venues, festivals and industry organisations across the state through her leadership at Sound NSW. Lex Davidson is the manager of Cultural Strategy for the City of Sydney and the Chairperson of the Music Cities Network, a global network of music policy professionals. Under his stage name Lex Lindsay, he is a multidisciplinary artist, theatre maker and music composer with a background in directing film and music festivals. Lex has produced work for two Biennales of Sydney and is a contributing artist to pieces in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). His current project, composing choral works for CREATION, a speculative queer climate action religion, has been performed at the Sydney Opera House, Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks, and will feature in the grand reopening of the renovated Newcastle Art Gallery in 2026. Susie Beauchamp is half of the songwriting/performance powerhouse Box The Jesuit, an incredible live and recorded Sydney band from the mid 1980s until early 1990s. They supported Nirvana at the first Big Day Out and, more importantly, gave Hoey patrons all singing, all dancing, all death-defying, all pornographic cake eating nights to remember! The band ended when Susie’s partner in music and life, Goose (Stephen Gray) passed away. The legend remains, and the music remains completely captivating. Tamson Pietsch is director of the Australian Centre for Public History and History Lab's presenter. Credits This episode of History Lab was recorded on Gadigal Land, Sydney, at the State Library of New South Wales. For more literary events like this one, see the library's What's On page. Edited and mixed by Lachlan A'Court. History Lab is brought to you by the Australian Centre for Public History and UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert. Further reading and listening Explore the Spirits of the Hoey web page. Buy Spirits of the Hoey at Melbourne Books. For more Hoey memories, listen to another Impact Studios podcast ep featuring authors Liz Giuffre and Greg Ferris speaking with singer-songwriters Sarah Blasko and Sally Seltman, along with Hoodoo Gurus bassist Clyde Bramley about the life and times of the Hopetoun Hotel.

What made Australia's fringe cultural scene so generative in the 1980s — and what can it teach us about sustaining creative industries today? Tony Moore and Mark Gibson, co-authors with Chris McAuliffe and Maura Edmond) join Reg Mombassa (of Mental as Anything and Mambo fame) to launch their book Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries. In a wide-ranging discussion, hosted by journalist and academic Catharine Lumby, the panel examines how music, comedy, film and design crossed over from fringe scenes into the mainstream — and why that transition was never a sellout, but a negotiation. The discussion ranges from the Sydney pub rock circuit and the role of Countdown, to the institutional infrastructure — public broadcasters, independent labels, accessible welfare — that quietly made it all possible. And they ask the harder question: without that scaffolding, what does the future of Australian creative life actually look like? Enjoy a cameo appearance from Paul Fenech, actor, director, producer and comedian (Pizza, Fat Pizza and Housos). Fringe to Famous is published by Bloomsbury Academic, and the launch was held on Gadigal land, at Sydney's Gleebooks. Voices Tony Moore is a cultural historian and Professor of Media and Communications at Monash University, where he leads major ARC-funded projects on Australian comedy and the convict roots of democracy. A former ABC documentary maker and book publisher, his previous books include Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia's Bohemians, Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia, and The Barry McKenzie Movies. He is co-author of Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries. Mark Gibson is Professor in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT University. His research spans cultural and creative industries, the history of cultural studies, comedy and the role of audiences in cultural production. He is the author of Culture and Power: A History of Cultural Studies and co-author of Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries. Reg Mombassa is a New Zealand-born Australian artist and musician. A founding member of Mental as Anything — inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2009 — he is also a member of Dog Trumpet alongside his brother Peter. As principal artist and designer for Mambo Graphics, his work helped define the visual identity of one of Australia's most iconic and irreverent surf and streetwear labels. He continues to work as a visual artist and musician. Catharine Lumby (host) is Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney and foundation chair of its Media and Communications Department. The author and co-author of six books, she writes regularly for The Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC, and has advised the public and private sectors on cultural diversity, bullying prevention and social media. She is a leading public intellectual on media, culture and gender in Australia. Paul Fenech is an Australian filmmaker, writer, director, producer and actor. After winning Tropfest in 1998, he was able to parlayed his 1995 third-place entry, about his life as a pizza delivery driver, into the SBS series Pizza, which ran for five seasons from 2000. He went on to create Housos — winner of the Logie for Most Outstanding Light Entertainment Program in 2014. Credits This episode of History Lab was recorded on Gadigal Land, Sydney, at Gleebooks. For more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page. Edited and mixed by Daniel Wiggins. History Lab is brought to you by the Australian Centre for Public History and UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

What happens to women's art when the world stops looking? That's the question at the heart of A Woman's Eye: Her Art, Drusilla Modjeska's book about a century of women artists who made radical, visionary work — and were then, largely, forgotten. Recorded live at Gleebooks before a packed house, this is a conversation about art history as a political act: who gets remembered, who gets written out, and why it keeps happening. In conversation with literary biographer Bernadette Brennan — who is currently writing Modjeska's own biography — and joined by artist Julie Rrap, Modjeska moves from Wilhelmine Germany to 1920s Paris to the liberation of Dachau, tracing the lives of women who saw things their own way. Voices Drusilla Modjeska is the author of Poppy, Stravinsky's Lunch, The Orchid, The Mountain, Second Half First, and A Woman's Eye: Her Art, published by Penguin Books Australia. Bernadette Brennan is a literary critic and the author of A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work and Leaping into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears. She is currently writing a biography of Drusilla Modjeska. Julie Rrap is one of Australia's most significant contemporary artists. Her survey exhibition Past Continuous, centred on SOMOS, was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in 2024–25. SOMOS is now in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. A Woman's Eye: Her Art is published by Penguin Books Australia. Credits This episode of History Lab was recorded on Gadigal Land, Sydney, at Gleebooks. For more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page. Edited and mixed by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary. History Lab is brought to you by the Australian Centre for Public History and UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert. Works mentioned Paula Modersohn-Becker Self-Portrait on the Sixth Wedding Anniversary (1906) — nude self-portrait depicted as pregnant Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de | Google Arts & Culture entry from the Böttcherstraße Museums: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/IwVRLMk5ACZUJQ Lying Mother with Child II (1906) — nude mother reclining with child Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum / Museen Böttcherstraße, Bremen Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lying-mother-with-child-ii-paula-modersohn-becker/LgGzY69gnE9o7Q Portrait of Clara Rilke-Westhoff (1905) — Clara with rose Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg Collection record: https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/de/objekt/HK-2362 Claude Cahun I Am in Training, Don't Kiss Me (c.1927) — self-portrait with pursed lips and curls Jersey Heritage Collection Jersey Heritage page on Cahun: https://www.jerseyheritage.org/history/claude-cahun-and-jersey/ Que me veux-tu? / What Do You Want From Me? (1928) — double-exposure composite self-portrait Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris Also held in the Met collection: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/838682 Self-portrait in jester jacket (c.1928) — catching the viewer's gaze Jersey Heritage Collection (as above) Dora Maar Untitled [Assia] (1934) — model casting dramatic shadow Centre Pompidou, Paris (various versions held there and elsewhere) Pompidou reproduction page: https://editions.centrepompidou.fr/en/home-decor/dora-maar-reproduction-untitled-assia/1577.html Nusch Éluard on the beach (c.1935) — photograph of Éluard lying on beach Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris AWARE Women Artists entry with collection details: https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/dora-maar/ Lee Miller Tanja Ramm under a Bell Jar (1931) — woman's head enclosed in glass bell jar Lee Miller Archives (Farley Farm, Sussex); widely reproduced but not in a single permanent public collection page — the Lee Miller Archives hold the primary rights: https://www.leemiller.co.uk Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub, Munich (1945) — photographed by David Scherman Held at Tate Britain Tate collection record: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/miller-scherman-lee-miller-in-hitlers-bathtub-munich-x100252 Julie Rrap SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders) (2023) — life-sized bronze, artist standing on her own shoulders Permanent collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia; also shown at MCA Sydney Ocula interview with full context: https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/julie-rrap-standing-on-her-own-shoulders/ MCA exhibition page: https://www.mca.com.au (search "Julie Rrap Past Continuous")