Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 26 March 2026

The Social Survey in Global Perspective, 1900-2020s

2026 • Foreword by Mike Savage

The Social Survey in Global Perspective traces the evolution of social surveys beyond celebrated metropolitan examples, exploring their worldwide impact across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Contributors examine surveys in diverse contexts—from colonial territories to grassroots women’s organizations—to reveal methodological challenges and profound social influence. The collection illuminates how surveys shaped state power, social movements, and…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 10 March 2026

Better to be looked over, than overlooked

2026 • Simon Chapman

50 years of public health research and advocacy One of Australia’s most influential public health thinkers, Emeritus Professor Simon Chapman AO has released a new book that reflects on a career spent reshaping how Australians understand health and responsibility. Better to be looked over, than overlooked: 50 years of public health research and advocacy, is part memoir,…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 22 February 2026

Mary Booth: The Woman who Shaped the Anzac Legend

2026 • Raelene Frances and Bruce Scates

The compelling story of a forgotten feminist and the nation she helped build Mary Booth was a woman of startling contradictions – one of Australia’s first female doctors, a pioneering feminist and nationalist, she was also a staunch political conservative and a devoted empire loyalist and nationalist. She championed infant welfare, war commemoration, environmental reform,…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 22 February 2026

The Shortest History of Innovation

2026 • Andrew Leigh

In this dazzling, surprising and always entertaining book, bestselling author Andrew Leigh tells the story of innovation. Innovation shapes almost every corner of our lives, yet we rarely pause to notice it. Someone had to invent nails and wheelbarrows; alphabets and books; glass windows and windscreen wipers; tin cans and synthetic dyes. From tools and…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 23 November 2025

A fair day’s work: The quest to win back time

2025 • Sean Scalmer

The length of the working day and the challenges of work-life balance are pressing issues for many Australians, as well as lively matters of public controversy. While the winning of the eight-hour day is celebrated as a past industrial achievement, contemporary discussions of working hours often overlook its rich history. Tracing 150 years of campaigns…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 13 November 2025

Housing Policy in Australia: A Case for System Reform

2025 • Hal Pawson, Vivienne Milligan, Judith Yates

This book, extensively revised and updated in its second edition, presents a comprehensive overview of housing policy in Australia over the last quarter century. At a time of widespread concern about declining housing system performance, it investigates the many dimensions of housing affordability and housing wealth inequality, together with government actions affecting these outcomes. The…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 11 November 2025

The Colombo Plan: Development Internationalism in Cold War Asia

Conceived in 1950, the Colombo Plan for Co-operative Development in South and Southeast Asia was a unique experiment in foreign relations. Meeting annually across what we now know as the ‘Indo-Pacific’, talented administrators facilitated foreign aid provision, and promoted development fuelled state-making, internationalism and experimental regionalism across postwar Asia. David Lowe argues that this new…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 06 November 2025

Military History Supremo: Essays in Honour of David Horner AM FASSA

2025 •

Professor Emeritus David Horner AM FASSA is one of Australia’s greatest military historians and its fifth official historian of war and military operations. Few who undertake research in the field can do so without consulting his prodigious, authoritative and definitive publications. Serving for 25 years in the Australian Army before joining The Australian National University,…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 28 October 2025

From Resistance to Reform: Case Studies of Long-Term Social Justice Advocacy in Australia

2025 • Philip Mendes

Many social policy texts examine specific social policy debates at a point in time and offer mostly technical interpretations of why existing or amended policies and programs have worked or not worked. In contrast, this text presents a comprehensive historical and political analysis of four policy areas where reform was achieved after many years of…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 01 September 2025

Isaiah Berlin in the Twenty-First Century: Liberal Pluralism for Troubled Times

2025 • George Crowder

Isaiah Berlin is well known as a defender of liberal democracy in the Cold War. In this path-breaking study, George Crowder argues that Berlin’s ideas have application beyond their original context to the problems of our own time. Focusing on three central themes – liberty, identity, and value pluralism – Crowder presents a fresh interpretation…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 28 July 2025

Migrants, Television and Australian Stories A New History

2025 • Kate Darian-Smith, Sue Turnbull, Sukhmani Khorana and Kyle Harvey

This book examines the intertwined histories of television and migration in Australia, told from the perspectives of migrants who worked in the screen industry and the many more who watched television. Their stories demonstrate how Australia’s growing cultural diversity has challenged conventional representations of ‘Australianness’ on television, and how ongoing advocacy has supported the growing…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 03 June 2025

Medicine on a Larger Scale: Global Histories of Social Medicine

2025 •

Medicine on a Larger Scale: Global Histories of Social Medicine Edited by Warwick Anderson, Anne Kveim Lie and Jeremy A. Greene The book includes separate chapters by him and Hans Pols FAHA FASSA FRSN. This groundbreaking collection draws together case studies of social medicine in the Global South, radically shifting our understanding of social science…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 06 February 2025

Future Cities Making

2025 •

Future Cities Making: Mission-oriented Research for Urban Sustainability Transitions in Australia Edited by Niki Frantzeskaki, Magnus Moglia, Peter Newton, Deo Prasad and Melissa Pineda Pinto This open access book describes the complex dynamics that coevolve in cities and from cities, to inform agendas for urban research and urban policy with a view to future city…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 27 January 2025

Murriyang: Song of time

2025 • Stan Grant

Stan Grant is talking to his country in a new way. In his most poetic and inspiring work yet, he offers a means of moving beyond the binaries and embracing a path to peace and forgiveness, rooted in the Wiradjuri spiritual practice of Yindyamarra – deep silence and respect. Murriyang, in part Grant’s response to the…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 29 October 2024

The Politics of Gender Equality

2024 • Carol Johnson

The Politics of Gender Equality: Australian Lessons in an Uncertain World This open access book provides the first in-depth study of the development of federal gender equality politics and policy in Australia from the 1970s to the present day. Australia has a history of gender equality innovation, including granting women’s suffrage long before equivalent countries.…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 27 October 2024

Viral Times: Reflections on the COVID-19 and HIV Pandemics

2024 •

Edited By Jaime García-Iglesias, Maurice Nagington, Peter Aggleton This book explores the relationship between COVID-19 and AIDS. It considers both how the earlier HIV pandemic informed our engagement with COVID-19, as well as the ways in which COVID-19 has changed how we remember and experience AIDS. Individual sections focus on sexual and intimate relationships, inequalities and injustice, the…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 21 October 2024

Let’s Tax Carbon: And Other Ideas for a Better Australia

2024 • Ross Garnaut

Ross Garnaut A new path for Australia, by eminent economist and author of the bestselling Superpower Could Australia become a full-employment, renewable-energy superpower? Ross Garnaut says yes, and it starts with taxing carbon. A levy on the big polluters will help fund Australia to become a carbon-free energy giant, lower the cost of living and…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 02 October 2024

Pandemic societies: A critical public health perspective

2024 • Alan Peterson

Alan Petersen From SARS to Zika, and Ebola to COVID-19, epidemics and pandemics have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Each outbreak presents new challenges but the responses are often similar. This important book by Academy Fellow Professor Alan Petersen explores the dimensions, dynamics and implications of emerging pandemic societies. Drawing on ideas from sociology…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 24 September 2024

Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism How we crushed the curve but lost the race

2024 • Steven Hamilton, Richard Holden

Steven Hamilton, Richard Holden In many ways, Australia handled the COVID-19 pandemic as well as any country in the world – but what did we get wrong? Australia’s economic policy response to the pandemic was as effective as any other country’s – and dramatically better than most. Was this inevitable? Was it luck? Was it the…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 29 July 2024

Algorithms of Anxiety: Fear in the Digital Age

2024 • Anthony Elliott

Algorithms of Anxiety: Fear in the Digital Age Anthony Elliott Machine learning algorithms are widely presumed to herald a world in which the crippling burdens of anxiety can be left behind.  The digital revolution promises a brave new world where individuals, communities and organizations can at last take control of the future – anticipating, designing…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 28 July 2024

Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New

2024 • Gari Tudor-Smith, Paul Williams, Felicity Meakins

Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New Gari Tudor-Smith, Paul Williams, Felicity Meakins The incredible story of the resilience and recovery of Australia’s First Nations languages Australia’s language diversity is truly breathtaking. This continent lays claim to the world’s longest continuous collection of cultures, including over 440 unique languages and many more dialects. Sadly, European…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 28 July 2024

The Development of University Teaching Over Time: Pedagogical Approaches from 1800 to the Present

2024 • Tom O'Donoghue

The Development of University Teaching Over Time: Pedagogical Approaches from 1800 to the Present By Tom O’Donoghue Examining two centuries of university education, this book charts the development of pedagogical approaches since the year 1800 and how they have transformed higher education. While institutions for promoting advanced learning in various forms have existed in Asia,…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 04 July 2024

Societal Deception: Global Social Issues in Post-Truth Times

2024 • Geoffrey Lawrence

This book provides a comprehensive overview of ‘societal deception’ – how and why people are deceived and led to believe fake news. Coherently blending critical political economy and sociology, the author provocatively examines how corporations, political parties, the media, think tanks and assorted ‘influencers’ seek to manipulate public opinion to achieve their goals. This book…

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Fellows’ Featured Books & Articles • 03 July 2024

How to Lose a War

2024 • Amin Saikal

An incisive, authoritative account of the West’s failures in Afghanistan, from 9/11 to the fall of Kabul In 1958, Richard Nixon described Afghanistan as “unconquerable.” On 15 August 2021, he was proven right. After twenty years of intervention, US and NATO forces retreated, enabling the Taliban to return to power. Tens of thousands were killed…

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