Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220101526
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$364,560.00
Summary
How Republics Die: Rome's democratic breakdown in the first century BCE. This project aims to use recent political science scholarship on democratic breakdown and the threat of a competitive authoritarian regime in Trump’s US to analyse the breakdown of the Roman Republic in the 50s BCE under Caesar and Pompey. Expected outcomes include a better understanding of how and why constitutional government collapsed in Rome, using language and concepts directly transferable to our own fragile democracy ....How Republics Die: Rome's democratic breakdown in the first century BCE. This project aims to use recent political science scholarship on democratic breakdown and the threat of a competitive authoritarian regime in Trump’s US to analyse the breakdown of the Roman Republic in the 50s BCE under Caesar and Pompey. Expected outcomes include a better understanding of how and why constitutional government collapsed in Rome, using language and concepts directly transferable to our own fragile democracy. This should benefit the study of Roman history at all levels and provide historians and political scientists with a unique dataset for analysing how a centuries-old democracy fell into authoritarian rule.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190100677
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$343,000.00
Summary
Australians and federation: commemoration, identity and engagement. This project aims to advance understanding of the history of Australians' attitudes towards federation since 1901. It will use a series of commemoration case studies drawn from the 1950s and 2000s to analyse changing attitudes towards the federal compact. The project is significant in its application of historical methodology to the conception of the federation as a living, breathing structure. Expected outcomes are a greater un ....Australians and federation: commemoration, identity and engagement. This project aims to advance understanding of the history of Australians' attitudes towards federation since 1901. It will use a series of commemoration case studies drawn from the 1950s and 2000s to analyse changing attitudes towards the federal compact. The project is significant in its application of historical methodology to the conception of the federation as a living, breathing structure. Expected outcomes are a greater understanding of how Australians have attached to their federation over time, contextualisation of debates about national commemorations, and insights into historical attitudes towards civic institutions and democratic governance. Benefits include a more informed debate about federation reform.Read moreRead less
Juries, justice and citizenship. This project aims to expose the history of cultural and legal processes that for most of the twentieth century denied enfranchised Australian women the equal right to sit on juries. The project expects to provide new legal and historical understandings of structural gender and racial inequalities that persist today. The project will advance national and international knowledge by reconstructing the gender dynamics of historical court processes and documenting wom ....Juries, justice and citizenship. This project aims to expose the history of cultural and legal processes that for most of the twentieth century denied enfranchised Australian women the equal right to sit on juries. The project expects to provide new legal and historical understandings of structural gender and racial inequalities that persist today. The project will advance national and international knowledge by reconstructing the gender dynamics of historical court processes and documenting women’s struggles to overcome their exclusion. It will recover a previously unexamined aspect of legal history, and provide an important corrective to current understandings of the representativeness of Australian juries.Read moreRead less
How infectious diseases became ecological: a global history. This project aims to investigate the conceptual history of disease ecology. During the twentieth century, infectious diseases researchers, many of them Australian, drew on animal ecology and evolutionary theory so our knowledge of how germs and parasites interact with human hosts might become more dynamic and broadly biological. The goal of this transnational historical research is to clarify the connections of animal ecology and evolu ....How infectious diseases became ecological: a global history. This project aims to investigate the conceptual history of disease ecology. During the twentieth century, infectious diseases researchers, many of them Australian, drew on animal ecology and evolutionary theory so our knowledge of how germs and parasites interact with human hosts might become more dynamic and broadly biological. The goal of this transnational historical research is to clarify the connections of animal ecology and evolutionary biology with biomedicine, and show how contemporary understandings of biosecurity and disease preparedness emerged from this conjunction.Read moreRead less
Profit and Loss: The commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. This project will be the first to investigate the global commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. It will employ a multi-disciplinary approach involving history, economic anthropology, economic history, and data science. The project will generate new knowledge about the 19th century global marketplace in Australian Indigenous human remains, and will reveal whether and how these are involved in the trade’s modern manifestati ....Profit and Loss: The commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. This project will be the first to investigate the global commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. It will employ a multi-disciplinary approach involving history, economic anthropology, economic history, and data science. The project will generate new knowledge about the 19th century global marketplace in Australian Indigenous human remains, and will reveal whether and how these are involved in the trade’s modern manifestations from 1950 to the present. The project will uncover an unknown history, assist repatriation practice, provide information to help reduce the modern trade, and contribute to truth-telling as a precondition of healing and reconciliation.Read moreRead less
Ancient Egyptian papyri: unlocking secrets to the history of writing. This project aims to investigate the chemical composition of papyri from ancient Egypt and their inks to identify scribes, date texts, detect forgeries, match fragmentary texts, and illuminate environmental and technological change. Papyrus and carbon-based ink were the primary writing materials in the ancient Mediterranean world from 2600 BCE to 1000 CE, but the uncertain provenance and date caused by clandestine excavation a ....Ancient Egyptian papyri: unlocking secrets to the history of writing. This project aims to investigate the chemical composition of papyri from ancient Egypt and their inks to identify scribes, date texts, detect forgeries, match fragmentary texts, and illuminate environmental and technological change. Papyrus and carbon-based ink were the primary writing materials in the ancient Mediterranean world from 2600 BCE to 1000 CE, but the uncertain provenance and date caused by clandestine excavation and the antiquities trade limits our understanding of them. The non-destructive and inexpensive analysis will provide new understanding of environmental, technological, and socio-cultural change in ancient cultures from Egypt to Rome by providing new insights into writing technology, scribal identity, dating, and authenticity.Read moreRead less
The Aboriginal land estate in New South Wales. This project aims to investigate Aboriginal economic activity via the first extensive place-based ethnographic study of New South Wales (NSW) Aboriginal Land Council. It examines approaches to managing lands for economic development and community benefit, especially the leveraging of communal land holdings for economic advancement as the return of land to the NSW Aboriginal community will escalate from 2017. Yet the benefits of land-based entreprene ....The Aboriginal land estate in New South Wales. This project aims to investigate Aboriginal economic activity via the first extensive place-based ethnographic study of New South Wales (NSW) Aboriginal Land Council. It examines approaches to managing lands for economic development and community benefit, especially the leveraging of communal land holdings for economic advancement as the return of land to the NSW Aboriginal community will escalate from 2017. Yet the benefits of land-based entrepreneurialism in NSW have never been reviewed. The project will provide significant benefits, including improved policy settings and insights into Aboriginal worlds.Read moreRead less
Theatre and autocracy in Ancient Greece. This project aims to study the relations between theatre and autocratic power in antiquity. Theatre, from the start, appealed just as much to autocrats as to democrats and throve in autocratic states for half a millennium after the extinction of the Classical democracies. While many studies trace ancient Greek theatre’s links to democracy, none explore its links to specific tyrants, monarchs or emperors. This project will examine how autocrats moulded the ....Theatre and autocracy in Ancient Greece. This project aims to study the relations between theatre and autocratic power in antiquity. Theatre, from the start, appealed just as much to autocrats as to democrats and throve in autocratic states for half a millennium after the extinction of the Classical democracies. While many studies trace ancient Greek theatre’s links to democracy, none explore its links to specific tyrants, monarchs or emperors. This project will examine how autocrats moulded the world’s first mass medium of communication to consolidate their power, and how competing interests used the theatre to share, limit or challenge that power.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200101479
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$424,813.00
Summary
The Sounds of Time. In our age of rapid technological acceleration, understanding how time shapes social life and cultural production is an urgent task. This project aims to write an important new chapter in time’s history from the origins of the mechanical musical clock in fourteenth-century Europe to the spread of European time across the world by missionaries in the sixteenth century. Traversing histories of science, religion, and time, the project expects to be the first sonic history of tim ....The Sounds of Time. In our age of rapid technological acceleration, understanding how time shapes social life and cultural production is an urgent task. This project aims to write an important new chapter in time’s history from the origins of the mechanical musical clock in fourteenth-century Europe to the spread of European time across the world by missionaries in the sixteenth century. Traversing histories of science, religion, and time, the project expects to be the first sonic history of time, and to develop innovative transdisciplinary approaches to the global history of material culture. It aims to benefit Australian culture by providing a richer history of the origins of time measurement, opening up alternative visions of how we might live in time now.Read moreRead less
Shop Talk: Department Stores, Shoppers and Consumer Capitalism, 1945-2025. This project aims to provide a deeper understanding of shopping and its significance in everyday Australian life by using oral history interviews with shoppers, workers and managers who have engaged with department stores since 1945. This project expects to produce the first history of the country’s post-war department stores. Expected outcomes include new, more nuanced perspectives of shopping and the challenges affectin ....Shop Talk: Department Stores, Shoppers and Consumer Capitalism, 1945-2025. This project aims to provide a deeper understanding of shopping and its significance in everyday Australian life by using oral history interviews with shoppers, workers and managers who have engaged with department stores since 1945. This project expects to produce the first history of the country’s post-war department stores. Expected outcomes include new, more nuanced perspectives of shopping and the challenges affecting the retail sector via a range of publications, international collaborations, and an archive of oral history recordings. This should provide significant benefits to researchers examining the retail sector, to Australians working in retail, and to ordinary Australians, whose stories will be placed on the historical record.Read moreRead less