In this profile, the PHA NSW & ACT membership officer, Judith Godden (PhD Macq, BA(Hons) UNE, MPH (a.e.g.) USyd, Dip Ed. UNE, FACN(hon), MPHA) talks about her forays into medical history. What is your current position/area of historical interest: I’m into pain at the moment! I specialise in the history of medicine and my commissioned history, … Read more
One of my day jobs is teaching plain English to public servants. I encourage them to embrace accuracy, brevity and clarity and therefore to abandon tautologies. I’ve given up suggesting that you can’t have a new initiative and that, if you have to voice an opinion in government writing, it does not have to be personal. … Read more
Emma Dortins mixes history and art… A hesitant hand clap, silence, another clap followed by another, a shuffle and guffaw, more confident clapping, a whoop and smattering of laughter as the claps develop a pattern. This is one of the recordings sound artist and clarinet player Laura Altman (LINK) and I have filed away … Read more
This post is a personal reflection by Ian Willis about his involvement in a community consultation on the Camden Town Centre Enhancement Strategy. The strategy involves a number of elements: a decked car park; traffic lights; additional street lighting; new street furniture; and landscaping, signage and footpath development. It has produced a problematic consultative process … Read more
…and to Samantha Leah, a PHA NSW member from regional New South Wales. Samantha is an historian and heritage consultant with nghenvironmental, based in Wagga Wagga but travelling far and wide! What made you decide to pursue a career in history? My Pop was a pilot with the RAF in Bomber Command during the Second … Read more
Our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is taking history books to read at the beach. One is Michael Pembroke’s biography of NSW governor Arthur Phillip. Pembroke’s book was on the shortlist in the history category of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. It did not win the $80,000 prize, which was shared by Joan Beaumont for Broken … Read more
Five minutes with a new PHA NSW & ACT member, Carol Roberts… Carol has a Master of History (UNE), Bachelor of Arts Majoring in Australian History (UNE), Advanced Diploma Local, Family & Applied History, Associate Diploma in Theory, Musicianship and Criticism (Trinity College of Music, London), Diploma in Community Cultural Development. What are your current … Read more
PHA (NSW & ACT) member Sue Castrique’s long-awaited history of the convict period on Cockatoo Island was launched at History House in Sydney on 26 November. This work deals with corruption, patronage and intrigue, constant features of NSW politics in colonial times just as they are now. Under the Colony’s Eye tells the story … Read more
Bruce Baskerville, Chair of the PHA NSW & ACT reflects… As public historians I often think we are not particularly aware of our own history. The professional historian, in the sense of the historian who could earn a living from their vocation, only really came into being in the later 19th century with the creation … Read more
On the eve of Gough Whitlam’s memorial service, Guy Betts reminds us of Whitlam’s respect for the historical perspective. One of the treasures of the Whitlam Institute’s collection is a remarkable series of school reports. These school reports comment on Gough Whitlam’s character and his intellectual development from the age of seven. In them, we … Read more