News from around the School
SHS continues to excel in core 'business'
In terms of core activities, the School of Historical Studies continues to register Faculty-leading achievements. In addition to its clear leadership position in teaching quality, research higher degree (RHD) completions that alone in the Faculty meet University requirements, and boasting the most proactive knowledge transfer programs in the Faculty, SHS also achieved the highest level of research income in the Faculty of Arts in 2009. The Research Training Scheme (RTS) – which reflects RHD completions (50%), all research income (40%), and refereed publications (10%) – saw SHS achieve the outstanding return of 1.7 million, the highest in the Faculty.
Students vote SHS Number 1 in Quality of Teaching
By Parshia Lee-Stecum, Chair of Undergraduate Studies School of Historical Studies
SHS programs regularly achieve excellence in undergraduate teaching. By the measure the Faculty and University acknowledge as the primary indicator of student-centred teaching performance – the Quality of Teaching survey results – the School of Historical Studies leads all other Schools in the Faculty.
A summary of the most recently collated QoT figures (2008) rates SHS as No 1 in the key areas of ‘well taught’ and ‘overall satisfaction’:
Q.2 This subject was well taught
SHS Subject Average: 4.38 Faculty Average: 4.14
Q.9 Overall satisfied with the quality of learning
SHS Subject Average: 4.29 Faculty Average: 4.05These numbers simply confirm a truth which we know goes beyond raw statistics, and in which we should all take the greatest pride: SHS represents best teaching practice at undergraduate level in the Faculty of Arts. Whatever pressures may be felt in these or coming days, I hope the knowledge of our value as teachers, and of the value of the subjects we teach, will provide confidence and encouragement as we undertake another semester of teaching excellence.
SHS Scoops the Pool (Miegunyah and other achievements)
Capping off an excellent non-semester period, we are delighted to report that Professor Cormac O’Grada, a leading world specialist on the history of the Irish famine, will be the Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow for 2010 in the School of Historical Studies. Congratulations to Stephen Wheatcroft for all his hard work in putting together this successful application.
This welcome announcement came fast on the heels of a series of good news for SHS, including Successful ARC Linkage grants to Elizabeth Malcolm and Dolly McKinnon ($149,000); and Margaret Manion ($210,000) Promotion to Senior Lecturer, Level C, for KO Chong-Gossard, Ara Keys, and Sara Wills Confirmations of Michael Cathcart and Sara Wills 15 Successful RHD Completions between October 2008 and May 2009: 9 PhDs and 6 MAs.
Research Excellence
Since its inception in 2007 the School’s research performance has been unparalleled In the Faculty of Arts and outperformed all other Schools in generating research income for the Faculty. The School earned $3.7m in 2007 which was 28% of the Faculty total and again $3.7m in 2008 which was 37% of the Faculty total for that year. Research is of course not fully-funded by government so the School excels in an area which is not well supported financially from government sources.
The School’s postgraduate load has increased between 2007-2008 while the Faculty and University’s overall has decreased in the same period. The School’s completion rate of close to 80% in the latest statistics is an outstanding achievement and unparalleled in the Faculty and across the University.
Congratulations to all staff and students involved in these outstanding endeavours and achievements.
Greg Dening Memorial Lecture launches SHS Free Public Lecture Series
5 August - 9 September 2009
Staff and students from across the Faculty of Arts joined the School of Historical Studies to hear world-acclaimed historian and SHS Professorial Fellow, Dipesh Chakrabarty, deliver the second Greg Dening Memorial Lecture and in so doing, launch our second semester Free Public Lecture Series. Under the series theme of Myths and Misconceptions, Professor Chakrabarty put to a capacity audience the persuasive argument that post colonialism provides an increasingly significant focus for understanding the global world, suggesting that it would fit permanently into the humanities and that, furthermore, the study of humanities is more relevant now than ever before.
For the following five weeks, the series continued with lectures delivered by local and international historians on subjects ranging from 'Pirates and Disorder' to 'The Fires of Pompeii: Doctor Who and Stones that Speak'.
The ICT Theatre was regularly filled to capacity, with the final 'Barbarians at the Gates of Troy or Who are you calling a Philistine?' introduced by the University of Melbourne's Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research, Professor Peter Rathjen. We now look forward to the next fascinating series in Semester 1, 2010.
All lectures in the 2009 series were recorded and can be accessed from the 'Read More' links on the School's events calendar.
SHS welcomes host of international visitors
16 March 2009
Staff and students are delighted to welcome Professor Karen Blacom, Professor Cormac Ó Gráda, Professor Susan Smulyan and Professor Jean-Marc Olivier to the School.
Karen Balcom, an historian from McMaster University in Toronto, will be on study leave at SHS until the end of July. Karen, who undertook her PhD (2002) at Rutgers University under the supervision of Alice Kessler-Harris, teaches and researches in US and Canadian history, and in Gender Studies. She is author of The Traffic in Babies: Cross-border Adoption, Baby-selling and the Development of Child Welfare Systems in the United States and Canada, 1930-1960, and intends to undertake comparative Australian work while she is in Melbourne. Pat Grimshaw is coordinating Karen’s visit, and is planning with colleagues occasions when we can hear from Karen about her work.
Professor Cormac Ó Gráda of University College Dublin, the leading authority on the Great Irish Famine and comparative history of famines will be visiting for a month as a partner investigator on an ARC grant on Famines in Modern World History. He is author of Black'47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy and Memory, Princeton, 1999. And he has just completed a volume with Princeton on, Famine: A Short History which will be due out in April.
Jean-Marc Olivier is Professor of History at the University of Toulouse 2 Le Mirail and Director, Framespa Laboratory ‘History of Societies since the Middle Ages’, University of Toulouse, 2 Le Mirail (UMR 5136). He received his doctorate in Contemporary History at the Université Lumière-Lyon 2 in 1998 with a thesis on Société rurale et industrialisation douce : Morez (Jura) (1780-1914)/Rural Society and Gentle Industrialisation : Morez (Jura), 1780-1914. His current project is a work entitled L’industrialisation autrement en Europe occidentale ou le développement économique sans la grande usine (vers 1780-vers 1930)/Industrializing Differently in Western Europe or Economic Development without Large Factories, 1780-1930. Professor Olivier comes to us as a Faculty International Scholar and his host is Professor Chips Sowerwine.
Susan Smulyan, who comes to us from the American Civilization Department at Brown University, arrived here as a Faculty International Scholar in early February, and is with us until early June. Susan is a cultural historian of the United States in the twentieth century, and the author of two books: Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) and Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). She has in addition a particular interest in digital history and has worked on three large web projects: Whole Cloth: Discovering American History Through Science and Technology; Freedom Now!: An Archival Project of Tougaloo College and Brown University; and Perry Visits Japan. Susan will – among other things – be teaching the honours seminar ‘American Publics’ with David Goodman, guest lecturing to undergraduate American history classes, and contributing to the Current Directions and Brown Bag seminars.
Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation bushfire protection information booklet available for download
17 February 2009
The Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation has available a booklet funded by Emergency Management Australia, aimed at assisting people to prepare for and protect their precious possessions in the event of bushfires.
This booklet is a free public resource, available to download here.
Download booklet (pdf 2MB)