Academy Fellow

I am an historian of the Cold War with a particular interest in the impact of communism, anti-communism and espionage on the politics and culture primarily of Australia and the United States. A distinctive feature of my research is its focus on the human aspects of the Cold War: how different sets of individuals were affected and how they responded. This case study approach, unusual in Cold War studies, formed the basis of two of my monographs (Red Apple and Spies and Sparrows), and several of my articles and book chapters on intelligence agents and their targets. Dimensions of personal identity and lived experience, lost in broader studies of the Cold War, are restored. Social history is linked with political history, the individual with the institutional, the local with the international. My research also focusses on the bureaucracy of repression and the nature of a state’s surveillance of its citizens. This is revealed, especially, in the declassified files of American, Australian and British intelligence agencies. It is set against a background of moral panic that characterised domestic and international anti-communism. My research has been disseminated not only through the scholarly community but also across public forums: newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.

·      La Trobe University: Senior Tutor & Coordinator, Politics Department, 1977-80

·      Eltham College: Head of History, 1981-90

Victoria University: Lecturer (1991), Senior Lecturer (1994), Associate Professor (1998), Professor (2002), Emeritus Professor (2019). 

2025     Victorian Community History Awards 2024, History Article Award (PROV & RHSV)

2019    Wakefield Essay Prize (History Council of South Australia and Wakefield Press)

2019     Labour History Prize (UnionsNSW and Australian Society for the Study of Labour History),

2009    Fellow, Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Center, NYU

2004    Fellow, Gramsci Foundation (auspiced by University of Bologna)

2004     Australian Universities Teaching Committee Award for University Teaching (finalist)

2002     Vice Chancellor’s Medal for Excellence in Research

2002     Fellow, International Center for Advanced Studies, NYU

2000     Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence, Victoria University

1997     The British Academy Award (auspiced by IHR, University of London)

1997     Labour History Prize (History Council of NSW and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History)

1996     Ann Hilda-Sainsbury Award for Teaching Excellence

1.      Phillip Deery & Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds) (2024), Russians in Cold War Australia, London: Lexington Books. (ISBN 978-1-66694-499-0)

2.      Phillip Deery (2024), ‘Vladimir Petrov: A Reappraisal’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 70:3, pp. 1-18.

3.      Phillip Deery (2022), Spies and Sparrows: ASIO and the Cold War, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. (ISBN 9780522878301)

4.Ellen Schrecker & Phillip Deery (2017), The Age of McCarthyism. (3^rd ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press. (ISBN-10: 1-319-05018-2).

5.Phillip Deery (2014), Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York, New York: Fordham University Press. (ISBN 9780823253685). Paperback edition, 2016 (ISBN 9780823271795).