Academy Fellow

My research work has been in fields of Australian social and political history, primarily in the twentieth century. I have published a biography of ALP leader H.V. Evatt (short-listed for the Prime Minister’s History Prize, and for the National Biography Award), and two volumes on social welfare development and politics in Australia covering 1870 to 2020 (A Decent Provision and An Unlikely Survival). Other books have dealt with Australia’s Vietnam war, and the political culture of the 1950s.

Joint-authored books include Half a Citizen, which won the Australian Human Rights Commission Non-fiction Award in 2011, and Fathering: An Australian History, which won the Oral History Association Book Award in 2026. I have also published work on social policy in South-East Asia, in particular Indonesia.

At RMIT university I was director of the Centre for Applied Social Research and, at the University of Melbourne from 2005, I served as director of the Australian Centre, Associate Dean (Research), Deputy Dean and acting Dean in the Faculty of Arts.

My research has been funded by the Australian Research Council with 6 Discovery grants and 4 Linkage grants. I am currently working with colleagues at Monash University on a Discovery grant project on disability and the family in Australia since 1950.

Director, Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT 2001-2005

Director, The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, 2006

Associate Dean (Research) Faculty of Arts, Melbourne, 2007-2010

Assistant Dean (PhD coursework) Faculty of Arts, Melbourne, 2012-2014

Deputy Dean Faculty of Arts, Melbourne, 2015 and 2017-2019

Acting Dean Faculty of Arts, Melbourne, parts of 2015 and 2017

1.        Murphy, John, An Unlikely Survival: The Politics of welfare in Australia since 1950, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne, 2024.

2.      Murphy, John, Evatt: A life, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2016.

3.          Murphy, John, A Decent Provision: Australian Welfare Policy, 1870 to 1949, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Modern Economic and Social History series, 2011.

4.         with ALISTAIR THOMSON, KATE MURPHY and JOHNNY BELL Fathering: An Australian History, Melbourne University Publishing, 2025.

5.         with ANDREW ROSSER, Contesting Social Welfare in South-East Asia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2023.