Archives: Publications

A fresh perspective on the Australia-China relationship told through the lens of memoir, culture and friendship. By Australian historian and Academy Fellow Professor David Walker and Li Yao, with Karen Walker. Happy Together tells the story of two families – one from Inner Mongolia and the other from outback South Australia. The book begins with […]

With the paradigm shift in consumption habits during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the digital transformation of supply-chain operations, Configured by Consumption is a timely reflection on the technological evolution of production-consumption cycles since the genesis of industrialization. Forward-thinking, it contemplates the digital future of logistics and supply chain operations in the face of evolving consumer […]

An exploration of the work and legacy of one of Australia’s most distinguished historians. Stuart Macintyre was an eminent figure within the world of Australian history scholarship for 45 years. This collection of essays and responses revisits and extends this extraordinary life of achievement and engagement. Leading scholars write here of Macintyre’s contribution to understanding […]

This study aims to compare the mortality rate and life expectancy of politicians with those of the age and gender-matched general populations. This was an observational analysis of mortality rates of politicians (i.e. members of national parliaments with available data on dates of birth, death and election, gender, and life tables) in 11 developed countries.

Does history repeat itself in meaningful ways, or is each problem unique? How can a knowledge of Australian history enhance our understanding of the present and prepare us for the future? Lessons from History is written with the conviction that we must see the world, and confront its many challenges, with an understanding of what has […]

How a nation still in grief from the Great War found the courage and resilience to face a new tragedy, the Great Depression. Some generations are born unlucky. Australians who survived the horrors of the Great War and the Spanish flu epidemic that followed were soon faced with the shock of the Great Depression. Today […]

A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, […]

COVID Societies presents a compelling and accessible overview of key sociocultural theories that can help us make sense of the diverse, dynamic and complex elements of the COVID crisis. These include discussions of the political economy perspective; biopolitics; risk society and cultures; gender and queer theory; and more-than-human theory. The book provides insights into everyday life […]

An updated edition of the classic study of capital punishment originally published 50 years ago, with a new introduction by Academy Fellow Barry Jones. The Penalty Is Death was first published in 1968, in the aftermath of the hanging of Ronald Ryan in Victoria — the last man executed in Australia. At the time, capital punishment […]

Why should we in Australia, or any country, care about poverty, human rights atrocities, health epidemics, environmental catastrophes, weapons proliferation or any other problems afflicting faraway countries, when they don’t, as is often the case, have any direct or immediate impact on our own safety or prosperity? Gareth Evans’ answer is the approach he adopted when Australia’s […]

Galtieri, Lukashenka, and Putin are some of the dictators whose untrammelled personal power has been seen as typical of the dog-eat-dog nature of leadership in authoritarian political systems. This book provides an innovative argument that, rather than being characterised by permanent insecurity, fear, and arbitrariness, the leadership of dictatorships is actually governed by a series […]