The Minister for Education, the Hon. Dan Tehan MP, has approved outcomes of the ARC Special Research Initiative for Australian Society, History and Culture for applications submitted between 28 February and 6 May.

Professor Michelle Arrow from the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations has been awarded $176,638 to assist her in writing a biography of the late Australian journalist, Anne Deveson AO.

“I am delighted and extremely grateful to receive this funding from the Australian Research Council, which will help me produce a biography of the journalist, broadcaster and activist Anne Deveson, who helped to transform Australia’s perceptions of mental illness, family violence and a host of other social issues,” says Michelle.

“The funding means that I can spend months in the archives, examining Deveson’s papers and watching and listening to some of her broadcast output. I am excited to begin the project next year.”

Associate Professor Lisa Wynn from the Department of Anthropology, was awarded $167,200 to help Australia’s understandings of infectious disease symptoms in the COVID era.

“I’m humbled to receive this grant, because there were so many qualified applicants. I think it reflects the ARC’s awareness that pandemics are biological and social phenomena, and we need to understand how people imagine pathogens and their transmission,” says Lisa.

“After all, we never actually see a virus, except under an electron microscope, so we have to imagine how they move between people. It’s our cultural imaginations of unseen things that this research project will study.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Sakkie Pretorius congratulated both academics on their outstanding achievements.

“I am delighted to see the tradition of ARC excellence continuing at Macquarie. Given the fierce competition for ARC grants, this is a wonderful achievement,” says Professor Pretorius.

Every month we celebrate impressive achievements and partnerships within the Macquarie community. Got something to share for next month? Tell us.

Macquarie’s star scientist

Congratulations to Dr Tayyaba Zafar, who has been named among the 2020 NSW Young Tall Poppies by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science.

Tayyaba is an astrophysicist and lecturer at Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) at Macquarie University, with her work focused on what stardust can tell us about the universe.

A strong advocate for encouraging women into STEM, read about Tayabba’s work inspiring the next generation of female scientists.

One overall winner in each state will be announced at the national Tall Poppy Awards later this month.

Historian’s ‘master work’ wins Premier’s prize

Kate Fullagar, an Honorary Professor in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, has won the General History Prize at the 2020 NSW Premier’s History Awards for her book The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist.

By charting the unlikely story of the intersecting lives of three 18th-century­ figures – Cherokee warrior Ostenaco, Raiatean voyager Mai and the British artist who painted them both, Joshua Reynolds – the book challenges our understanding of Indigenous peoples’ interactions with the globalising force of the British Empire.

Yay for our BA

Macquarie’s reimagined Bachelor of Arts – launched this year – has been shortlisted in the Australian Financial Review’s Higher Education Awards in the Employability category.

Designed in consultation with industry partners, the Faculty of Arts created the new degree to equip students with the most in-demand transferable skills like communication, problem solving and critical thinking to prepare them for employment. Throughout the course, students build a digital portfolio to showcase their skills to future employers while learning how humanities subjects can be applied to tackle problems in the world of work.

The AFR Higher Education Award winners will be announced on 18 November.

New grant to support wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people

A team from the Department of Indigenous Studies, made up of Professor Bronwyn Carlson, Madi Day, Dr Tristan Kennedy and Dr Ryan Frazer, has been awarded a $950,000 grant by the Commonwealth Department of Health for a project in partnership with ReachOut Australia.

The project aims to address the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people through an innovative and culturally safe social media campaign and supporting online resources.

Centre for Emotional Health research project awarded $700,000

Bupa Health Foundation has committed approximately $700,000 to a research project aimed at developing a sustainable system to deliver early intervention for mental health through Australian schools.

Working with students, parents, educators and policy-makers, ARC Australian Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor Ron Rapee will lead the project with the aim to develop and test the best possible method to identify youth at risk and test effective pathways to appropriate care.

“Young people with mental health problems rarely reach out for the help that they need. With this support from the Bupa Foundation, we’ll be able to develop innovative methods to identify young people who are in distress and connect them with the most appropriate places to get help,” says Ron.

Macquarie’s course #1 in Australia

In April, Austrade partnered with the social learning platform FutureLearn and Universities across Australia to provide free online courses to help students around the world continue learning during COVID lockdowns and to promote Australia as a quality study destination.

Twenty Higher Education and English Language Training providers released a collection of 52 free short courses onto the FutureLearn site. With over 836,000 enrolments, the campaign has been well received globally.

MUIC-ELC’s ‘Improve your IELTS Speaking Score’ has rated the most popular among these offerings, with 75,000 enrolments, in excess of 35,000 active participants, 7,300 completions and a rating of 4.9 out of 5 for satisfaction.

Director of MUIC and ELC Dr Pamela Humphreys led development and content planning for the course. She says it’s immensely gratifying to see how the course has resonated with international students,.

“We’re so proud that it was number one in the Austrade campaign based on enrolments. The team did an exceptional job putting it together, and it really is a wonderful testament to the quality of teaching we provide at MUIC-ELC.”

The Lighthouse welcomes ideas for future co-publishing opportunities – contact the editor, Angie Kelly on 9850 7483 or angie.kelly@mq.edu.au.

More attention needs to be given to the tragedies that unfold when troops return home, writes modern history lecturer Dr Matthew Bailey.

As Anzac Day again arrives on our national cultural calendar, many of us will reflect on the countless deaths and heavy losses suffered by Australian troops in past wars and conflicts. We will be reminded of the sacrifices made on our behalf. And of how the character displayed by our young men in the face of death modelled a set of core values, which now define us as a nation.

What we too often forget are the tragedies that unfold when troops return home. Post traumatic stress, suicide, depression and mistreatment by governments are glaring omissions from the Anzac story. But they provide important insights about war, and its cost, that are obscured during our annual recitations of mateship, courage and sacrifice.

To suggest a change in the way we think about Anzac is dangerous territory.

Over the past 20 years, Anzac has become impregnable; a bastion of patriotism over which words and argument cannot prevail.

Politicians and popular commentators have certainly played a role here, but the rise of Anzac is also understandable for a number of other reasons. Firstly, many Australians have deep familial ties to the military, simply because of the sheer number of men who served in the two World Wars. The rise of family history has encouraged interest on this front.

Secondly, narrative is fundamental to the ways in which all societies understand themselves, and there are few narratives more compelling than those involving warfare – simply because the stakes are so high. The Anzac story was crafted early and with great skill by war correspondents such as C.E.W. Bean, Philip Schuler and Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Bean also wrote the official Australian history of the war and was influential in founding the Australian War Memorial.

At Gallipoli, Bean wrote of excitement amongst the troops, their desire to be at the forefront of battle, a fear of being left out of the August offensive, a commitment to one’s mates, and a jocular larrikin streak. This characterisation of the Anzacs is largely how we understand them today.

Thirdly, and related to the importance of narrative: we need to believe that the terrible carnage of warfare, of the ultimate price paid by those who wore with pride the uniform of this country, meant something. The idea that it did not is too horrific to bear. The futile charge at the Nek, in which waves of the Australian 3rd Light Horse Brigade, devoid of artillery support, launched themselves towards lines of Turkish trenches protected by unassailable machine-gun positions, surely could not have been for nothing? Those who then died slowly during the day, lying beyond reach under the blistering sun desperate for water, must have done so in service of a greater purpose. Mustn’t they?

C.E.W. Bean reported such sentiments amongst the Anzacs who were evacuated from Gallipoli in December of 1915, writing in his official history that “the consideration which did go straight to every man’s heart was the tragedy of confessing failure after so many and well-loved comrades had given their lives to the effort.”

The attachment to Anzac is, therefore, understandable. But it is also narrow. The Anzac experience was far more complex than what we have retained from war correspondents like Bean. And any views amongst troops about the ills of war have had little impact on our commemoration of Anzac, which has from its beginnings been a carefully curated process.

To fully honour the service of Australian troops, we need to go beyond the stylised depictions that currently popularise Anzac commemoration. One way to do this is to expand our understanding of the experience of Australian soldiers, including their post-war lives.

So much of what is written and commemorated about Anzac and Australians at war is focused on operational history – the actions and mechanics of warfare. The Australian War Memorial is a prominent and influential example of this approach. Through this lens, when we assess the cost of war, we count the bodies. But these bodies are inscribed with a purpose. They are evidence of the sacrifice that makes meaning of war.

What happens when we move beyond the battlefield, beyond, even, the war itself? What of the Anzacs who returned home and never fully recovered? Those whose governments failed them? Who struggled to obtain pensions? Who accrued ruinous debts under misguided soldier settlement schemes? Of the several hundred who committed suicide? Men like VC recipient Hugo Throssell, who fired his last bullet into his own head, when setback after setback turned his damaged mind to a final, bleak despair?

The War Memorial is currently lobbying for additional funding of some $500 million, ostensibly to expand its capacity to do what it already does very well: to document and display the operational activities of Australians at war. Perhaps less money could, rather, be spent on telling more stories, in more detail, about the depth and long lasting cost and trauma of war.

This would not only give us a more realistic and nuanced understanding of war, it would also inform current discussions about the challenges facing Australian soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, as well as insight into the appalling suicide rate of veterans. We need to understand that there is nothing new about these issues. That this is what war produces, and what many veterans return to face.

Sacrifice does not end on the battlefield. Nor should our understanding of Anzac.

Dr Matthew Bailey

Finalist: Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning

 Matthew’s research interest lies in urban, business and retail history. He has published a number of articles and book chapters on retail and retail property history, has worked as a consumer research consultant in the retail property sector and is writing a monograph on the history of shopping centres in Australia.

Matthew’s passion for student learning involves developing innovative flipped classroom curricula for diverse student cohorts enrolled across multiple, integrated modes of delivery.

In 2014, the Department of Modern History identified a number of inefficiencies in the delivery of Open Universities Australia (OUA) units. Matthew’s proposed solution was to develop a unit designed from the ground up to run across all modes, with no modification required for OUA delivery and which, ultimately, could operate from a single iLearn site.

The development of MHIS205: Anzacs: Australians at War in 2014-15 fits within a broader context of transformation in Higher Education as institutions adapt to social and technological change – reflected in the shift towards flipped classrooms.

“Nomination for this award is a great honour,” he said.

“Teaching is at the heart of our social contribution as academics and recognition of the efforts invested in teaching is really gratifying.”

Professor Kathryn Millard

Finalist: Excellence in Research: Five Future-Shaping Priorities 

Kathryn is a filmmaker and essayist with a body of work that is internationally recognised and highly awarded. Psychology, mental health, popular fallacies and the afterlife of images are recurring themes in Kathryn’s body of work which spans award-winning feature dramas, documentaries and hybrids.

In the early 1960s psychologist Stanley Milgram, in seeking to understand the Holocaust, ran a series of controversial studies on obedience. If an authority orders painful shocks to be administered to another person — how do we respond? Do we do as we are told or not? The experiments raised a number of important questions about human nature, obedience and leadership.

Fifty years after Milgram’s original experiments, Kathryn, with a team of filmmakers and psychologists, re-staged Milgram’s experiments in Sydney, Australia, with actors, using her unique immersive realism technique. Shock Room combines dramatisations, animation, archival film and interviews with psychologists, providing new insights about how and why people refuse to inflict harm and the conclusions of the world’s most famous psychology experiment.

“I very much appreciate this research being acknowledged in this way,” she said.

“Shock Room demonstrates the value of screen production as a research method and provides further evidence that artistic innovation and research-based inquiry can go hand-in-hand.”

Dr James Martin

Finalist: Early Career Researcher – HASS 

James is a critical criminologist and emerging research leader in the field of cybercriminology. His research focuses on the newly-emerging crime of online illicit drug trading while areas of research focus include illicit drugs, organised crime, vigilantism and non-state governance, domestic and transnational policing and the global War on Drugs.

James’ doctoral research involved the ethnographic study of vigilante gangs operating in an informal settlement in Johannesburg. This research explored the nexus between organised crime and non-state governance, and provided unexpected conceptual grounding for my current research into ‘cryptomarkets’ – encrypted websites that facilitate a vast global trade in black market goods and services, particularly illicit drugs, with an estimated annual turnover in excess of 200 million USD.

In recent years, he has conducted innovative, ground-breaking research on the ‘dark net’ and has played a central role in identifying the unanticipated and counter-intuitive harm-reduction benefits associated with the growth of the online illicit drugs trade.

“It’s a huge honour to be nominated for the MQ Early Career Researcher of the Year Award,” he said.

“There’s still so much we don’t know about the dark net drugs trade, and it’s great to be recognised as having made a useful contribution to this dynamic and rapidly expanding area of research.”

Stay tuned next week to meet more of our amazing finalists!

Don’t forget to register for the awards ceremony to be held on Wednesday 1 November.

The 1970s was an era of significant change in Australian history. It was the decade of women’s liberation, gay liberation, renewed demands for Indigenous land rights, and the beginnings of multiculturalism.

It was also an era in which Australians engaged in a very lengthy discussion about national identity. While this had many dimensions, it was perhaps most potently expressed in popular culture, especially in film and television.

What most of these forms of popular culture had in common was the figure of the Ocker. The Ocker was crude, loud and brash, he was obsessed with sex and drinking, and he loved his mates. From Barry McKenzie to Don’s Party to The Paul Hogan Show, Ockerism was hard to ignore during the 1970s.

For the last few years, I’ve been researching the history of the 1970s in Australia, focusing on the many ways that the divide between public and private was reorganised and reordered by the politics of the new social movements.

In particular, I’ve been examining the decade through the prism of the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, a major investigation into the private lives of Australians, initiated in 1974. The Commission was an attempt to reckon with the realities – and inequalities – of contemporary life. It examined people’s experiences of abortion, sexuality, parenting and intimate relationships.

In its final report, released in 1977, the Commission shed new light on the unhappiness that existed behind closed doors. One of the consequences of the Royal Commission was the ways it showed that the family, far from being a safe haven, could be a place of danger and unhappiness, especially for women and children.

This research made me consider the pop culture Ocker in a new light. How might these two parts of the 1970s puzzle – Ockerism and women’s liberation – fit together?

The Ocker is seen as a figure of national identity, but his gender has been taken for granted. Few scholars have considered the Ocker in his specific historical context: an era in which Australian ideas about gender, sexuality and race were being challenged and remade.

In this lecture, I will argue that the Ocker and his continued dominance in seventies popular culture was a response to 1970s feminist politics.

Dr Clare Monagle, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, talks about how a popular television show is changing the way we teach history.

The Middle Ages are everywhere at the moment. Most ubiquitously, Game of Thrones is rolling out its sixth season. The story of the battle for the Iron Throne shows no sign of declining in popularity.

As a medieval historian, it is my duty to tell you that the Middle Ages of Game of Thrones has not that much to do with the real historical epoch we call the Middle Ages.

But, I’ve found over the years that this story is not necessarily what my students want to hear. They are attracted to the Middle Ages because they desire it as a place of magic and fantasy. From Tolkien, video games, Monty Python, and innumerable other cultural places, the Middle Ages are alive and well.

This year I decided to teach a unit that brought both Middle Ages together. ‘From Charlemagne to Game of Thrones: The Middle Ages Then and Now’ gives students an appreciation of the medieval millennium itself, as well as of the history of medievalism in modernity. Just as the real Middle Ages has a history, so too does the fantasy of the Middle Ages. For example, we discussed how Joan of Arc has been co-opted by the radical right in France as a model of an idealised pre-revolutionary non-immigrant Catholic nation. We looked at the use of Braveheart in recent campaigns for Scottish nationalism.

Alongside this history of medievalism, I taught the more normative medieval history described above. I wanted to show my students just how far contemporary ideas of the Middle Ages are from the historical reality. In so doing, I hoped that they would then see that when we talk about the Middle Ages in popular culture we are really talking about ourselves and our desires within modernity, rather than revealing an essential time in the past.

It was challenging to teach this, to exist in these multiple time frames. The other challenge was that the students were far more expert in contemporary medievalisms than I am, so I was often wrong! But I hope that modelled something good for them as well. Creative and pleasurable learning can only happen, I think, when we forego authority and open ourselves up to the enthusiasm and energy of others. I hope we achieved this. And to my 11-year old daughter’s delight, I have pledged to become a gamer in order to be better prepared for my next Game of Thrones class.