Dr Tanya Evans from the Department of Modern History is an acclaimed author and was recently awarded the NSW Premiers’ History Prize in Community and Regional History. We sat down with her to learn more about her role as a public historian examining the history of family, motherhood and sexuality.

What drew you to your research field?
I am passionate about researching ordinary people and places in the past and incorporating ordinary people in the process of my research and the construction of historical knowledge. I love teaching and producing public history and working in teams. I pitch my work at a variety of audiences because my research is targeted at disrupting people’s assumptions about the history of the family. I am committed to the democratisation of historical knowledge.

In layman’s terms, what is the wider impact of your research?
My current research is taking my focus on Australia and my background in British history to compare the different genealogical communities in Australia, England and Canada. An examination of the exponential growth and impact of family history around the world reveals the democratic possibilities of public history, the different constituencies involved with historical production and consumption, and the complex ways in which many of us make meaning of the past through our own family story.

Who has been your most significant research mentor?
My PhD supervisor Professor Sally Alexander taught me how to be the best researcher, teacher and scholarly citizen I could be. I also learned a lot from her about how to work as part of a team, among a huge international network of scholars, political activists and cultural commentators and to think carefully about the impact of my work.

If you were given one million dollars in research funding, what would be the first thing you would do?
My next book is a community funded, supported and written project involving colleagues, students and locals. I’d like to use it as a model for community history projects across NSW that bring together my research, teaching and community engagement passions and produce co-created outputs with students, community and cultural organisations targeted at different audiences. I have plans to expand existing research and PACE/MRes internship student projects in places like Bourke and Orange. I also want to establish research and community projects on family history in aged care facilities across Sydney and elsewhere.

 What has been your favourite and/or proudest research moment?
Hearing from family historians from all over the world saying how much they value my work and my interest in their passion. They are ardent fans of social history and the keenest collaborators I know. They undertake their research in a huge global network of people, knowledge and information, often using social media to communicate. We need to embrace that potential if we are serious about life-long learning.

Professor Mike Jones is Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Human Sciences and Deputy Head of the Psychology Department. He has co-authored a paper looking at the number of gun deaths in Australia before and after gun law reforms were enacted 20 years ago. He summarises his findings here.

In 1996, in the aftermath of a mass homicide in which 35 people were shot dead at a tourist attraction in Tasmania, the then Prime Minister John Howard called together all state Premiers and leaders of political parties in an effort to come to a national, apolitical agreement on control of certain categories of firearms. In doing so, he leveraged widespread horror at the events of Port Arthur with laws passing through the Federal then all State Parliaments the same year.

These laws did not ban gun ownership but limited what type of weapons could be sold, how they could be sold and to whom they could be sold. Weapons with rapid fire capacity such as semi-automatic rifles were the main target. The response was enormous with over 650,000 weapons voluntarily surrendered in the initial buy-back and over 65,000 received in additional subsequent amnesties and buy-back periods, including weapons that were not illegal under the new laws.

This was a costly exercise and inherently places some limitations on individuals’ rights to own firearms and has been criticised as unnecessary by those who oppose any control over gun ownership.

An article appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) this week in which I, along with colleagues from the University of Sydney, Simon Chapman and Philip Alpers, undertook an analysis of the impact these gun control laws have had on intentional deaths by homicide and suicide caused by firearms. Our analysis yielded three striking findings:

1. There had been no mass homicides in Australia in the 20 years after the passage of national gun control laws whereas there had been 13 in the 18 years beforehand.
2. The pre-existing decline in gun-related deaths accelerated after the laws were enacted.
3. By analysing non-gun related deaths, there was no evidence to support a substitution hypothesis where guns were simply replaced by other methods.

While our work does not prove the enactment of gun control laws caused the reduction in deaths, the statistical evidence is very strong. What the data reveals to me is that lives have been saved, and will continue to be saved, since gun control laws were enacted in Australia. We can argue over how many and why, but objectively speaking fewer people are dying by gunshot since what was an impressive display of unity in putting national interest first across the political spectrum.

One of the tasks of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, established in 2014, is to investigate where law, policy and practice have failed to protect children from sexual abuse in institutional contexts and make recommendations for reform. The Royal Commission recognised that appropriate and timely sharing of information between government and non-government organisations, and across jurisdictions, was essential to allow institutions to work together to identify, prevent and respond to child sexual abuse. It was not clear, however, whether the relevant legislation and policy across Australia was likely to be helping or hindering this flow of information.

Together with my colleague, Krista Lee-Jones, I undertook a detailed investigation of the laws and policies in every Australian state and territory that impact on whether institutions are allowed or required to share information when there are concerns about child sexual abuse. Our report, commissioned and published by the Royal Commission, examines information sharing arrangements in institutional contexts where children are most vulnerable: child protection, out-of-home care, early childhood services, schools, juvenile justice and extracurricular activities.

The legislative and policy frameworks around sharing information in these contexts must attempt to resolve the tension between two sets of rights: the rights of children to physical and personal integrity and protection from all forms of violence, including sexual abuse, and the right to privacy for the children and adults involved. We found that this tension has resulted in complex law and policy, which can give rise to confusion for those working in the field.

Our report identifies elements of the regulatory framework that are likely to impede the timely and appropriate sharing of information and that warrant further consideration and possible reform. These include complexity and fragmentation in Commonwealth, state and territory privacy laws, and the creation of central agency information hubs that do not allow front line professionals to use their judgment and share information laterally.

The report also identifies elements that support timely sharing of information, such as provisions that include the ‘best interests of the child principle’. Making this principle explicit in legislation helps to ensure that when a child’s right to safety comes into tension with the child’s right to privacy, or another’s right to privacy, the safety of the child becomes the primary consideration.

Our report concludes that it is possible to share information about child sexual abuse in institutional contexts where necessary in ways that are consistent with the right to privacy, but there is some law reform work needed to make this a reality.

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