Projects
Investigators:
Prof Melanie Oppenheimer (Chief Investigator), Dr Romain Fathi (Chief Investigator), Prof Susanne Schech (Chief Investigator), Dr Rosemary Cresswell (Partner Investigator), Prof Russell Wylie (Partner Investigator)
Summary:
This project aims to advance the concept of resilient humanitarianism through a historical investigation of one humanitarian body, the League of Red Cross Societies, from its inception to the end of the Cold War.
Global humanitarian crises abound due to ongoing conflict and natural disasters but nation states, bodies such as the United Nations and humanitarian organisations seem incapable of offering lasting solutions to intractable situations.
This project will use rarely accessed archives and an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the evolution of humanitarianism, voluntary action and global civil society during the 20th century.
This historical analysis can inform humanitarian policy, debates and practice of the present and future.
Grants:
- ARC DP190101171
Category:
Humanitarianism
Investigators:
Lead CI: Associate Professor Catherine Kevin, CI: Dr Zora Simic (UNSW), CI: Professor Ann Curthoys (University of Sydney)
Summary:
The project investigates similarities and differences in women's lived experiences of domestic violence across ethnic, cultural and class contexts; it historicises its cultural representations and their impacts; and identifies and assesses policy and legal measures to constrain domestic violence.
As well as a number of articles and book chapters, we are working towards the first book-length history of domestic violence in Australia.
As part of the larger project, we are collaborating with the SA-based Aboriginal women’s safety service Ninko, to document its transformation from a service for First Nations women and families run by white staff, to a service staffed and led by Aboriginal women.
Grants:
- ARC Special Research Initiative 200200460 (2021-2024)
Category:
Gender
Violence
Investigators:
Professor Matthew Fitzpatrick
Summary:
Who drove Germany's global imperialist foreign policy prior to World War One and how did they do so?
Using a new conceptual approach and new archival sources, this project seeks to improve our knowledge of the history of constitutional monarchy as a political form outside of Britain.
By studying the contest for power between the German monarch and other arms of the state and society, the project seeks to establish the effects of political change on the foreign policy of the German Empire.
Laying bare the tension between the royal prerogative and the constitutional state prior to 1914, this project explains how the struggle between the principles of monarchy and democracy was reflected in the history of Europe's imperial rivalries.
Grants:
DP180100118
Categories:
Imperial history
Political history
Diplomatic history
Investigators:
Professor Matthew Fitzpatrick
Summary:
This project is investigating the untold history of Anglo-German cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region through hitherto neglected German archival materials.
These materials point to thriving and thick webs of mutual assistance in cultural, scientific, economic, military and political affairs that weakened local sovereignty but ended abruptly with World War One.
The project will produce a new history challenging century-long Anglophone understandings of Anglo-German antagonism in the Asia-Pacific region.
Its benefits include providing new knowledge of the history of great power relations in the Asia-Pacific region and establishing an improved historical framework for understanding strategic cooperation in our region.
Grants:
- FT 210100448
Category:
Colonial history
Comparative imperialism
Transimperial history
Investigators:
Professor Andrekos Varnava (HASS), Associate Professor Marinella Marmo (BGL-Criminology), Dr Evan Smith (HASS)
Summary:
British, Australian and Commonwealth (colonial and post-colonial periods) border controls and ‘Suspect’ Communities is a long-term program of research that aims to explore the characteristics of British, Australian and Commonwealth border control and migrant community control since the early 1900s.
The research is on the strict ‘management’ of ‘undesirable’ migrant groups (identified by ethnicity, religion, nationality or political ideology) and settled migrant communities (including second generation), and on restricting more members of such groups from arriving.
Thus far, the research has focussed upon British, Australian and Commonwealth governments creating the tools of control to police these ‘undesirable’ communities within their borders and how they developed and then applied the policies and procedures to keep them out or limit their numbers.
Grants:
- ARC DP180102200 'Managing migrants and border control in Britain and Australia, 1901-1981'
Category:
Migration
British history
Australian history
Investigators:
Professor Andrekos Varnava
Summary:
British imperialism in Cyprus is a long-term ongoing program of research for Professor Andrekos Varnava, focussed upon all aspects of British imperialism and colonialism in Cyprus and the broader eastern Mediterranean.
The research explores histories focussed upon both the metropole and the periphery, and often both simultaneously, and situates this research within broader imperial and regional contexts.
Thus far this research has specifically focussed upon studies on imperial strategy and defence, the Great War and Cypriot wartime service in British forces, political violence and assassination, nationalism, far-right and far-left politics, population and public health, cultural representations, including cartooning, and post-colonial legacies of imperialism and colonialism, including mass violence, civil war and democratic deficit.
Grants:
- FT220100416 Divide and Rule or Protecting Minorities in the British Empire (submitted, pending decision)
Category:
Imperial history
British history
European history
Investigators:
Dr Alessandro Antonello
Summary:
This project aims to investigate the ways in which states, international organisations, and international communities have engaged with and conceptualised the ‘World Ocean’ as a natural environment from the 1950s to the 2000s.
In the context of current environmental and geopolitical challenges for the ocean, this project aims to analyse how these actors built institutions, communities, and territories in and for the ocean environment as a foundation for generating knowledge and claiming power, rights, and resources.
Grants:
- Australian Research Council DE190100922
Category:
Environmental history
Investigators:
Dr Prudence Flowers
Summary:
This project uses archival research and oral history to explore the historical intersection of abortion, health care, and politics in the United States and other Western democracies.
It analyses and historicises the place of anti-abortion activism in contemporary societies, considering this movement as a social and political phenomenon that intersects with the evolution and growth of modern conservatism.
A secondary strand investigates the impact of abortion politics, particularly anti-abortion framing, on health policy and abortion provision in the 21st century.
Grants:
- Catherine Helen Spence Memorial Scholarship (2018)
Category:
Political history
Social history
Gender history
US history
Investigators:
Dr James Kane
Summary:
When Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at the Council fo Clermont in 1095, he urged prospective crusaders to sew fabric crosses onto their clothing as a sign of their vow to complete the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and liberate the Holy Sepulchre. From that moment on, wearing the cross remained an essential component of the crusading experience.
This project investigates how the symbol of the cross influenced the ways in which medieval people described, conceptualised, and practiced crusading between the late eleventh century and the beginning of the fourteenth.
The project aims to produce the first ever book-length study of the cross and its impact in a variety of different crusading contexts, including the eastern Mediterranean, the Iberian Peninsula, the south of what is now France, and the eastern Baltic.
Category:
Medieval history
Investigators:
Dr James Kane, Dr Keagan Brewer (Macquarie University)
Summary:
Archbishop William of Tyre (d. c. 1186) is widely recognised as one of the most important historians of the twelfth century. His monumental history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem inspired numerous continuations in the medieval Latin West, especially in Old French, but scholars have devoted very little attention to the sole surviving Latin continuation of William’s work, which provides a unique perspective on the Third Crusade (1189–1192).
This project aims to produce a new critical edition of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre with a facing-page English translation, comprehensive introduction, and thorough notes on the text. The new edition/translation will be published in the long-standing series ‘Crusade Texts in Translation’ (Routledge).
Category:
Medieval history
Investigators:
Professor Penny Edmonds, Associate Professor Tully Barnett, Professor Heather Burke, Professor Claire Smith, Associate Professor Jane Haggis, Emeritus Professor Margaret Allen, Dr Ania Kortaba, Ngadjuri Elders Heritage and Land Care Council incorporated
Summary:
This project aims to investigate how community history, heritage, and cultural collections can be better preserved and made accessible through slow digitisation techniques.
The project will generate new interdisciplinary knowledge about Martindale Hall, SA, the historically significant objects it contains, and digitisation.
Expected outcomes include a new method that embeds digitisation in historical and cultural knowledge, and assist organisations to make sustainable decisions about when and how to digitise.
Benefits include improved public access to significant cultural heritage assets, return on investment for local history organisations, and protection of cultural heritage places and objects by the communities that care for them.
Grants:
- ARC Special Research Initiative (SR200200900)
Categories:
Australian history
Social history
Historical archaeology
Community heritage
Digital heritage
Investigators:
Dr Micaela Pattison
Summary:
The ‘Modern Girl’ was a transnational phenomenon produced from the multi-directional circulation of people, ideas, commodities, and mass culture in the interwar. Yet, in studies of this phenomenon, southern Europe and Latin America are almost entirely from the ‘maps’ created by the transnational collaborative projects which claim that she appeared simultaneously across the globe.
As an important corrective, this project will develop an analytical framework for understanding the Spanish Modern Girl and evaluate the usefulness of this ostensibly global heuristic for examining the varying experiences of modernity in Spain and Latin America.
Grants:
- CHASS Research Grant Scheme - Early Career Researcher (ECR) Research Project
Category:
Gender history
Gender and sexuality
Spanish history
Global history
Meet our History, Archaeology and Geography researchers
At Flinders, our researchers at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences include experienced experts from many different areas. Shaping our ever-changing world, our practice-based research allows us to stay at the forefront of modern education.
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