Australian environmental historian focusing on rural landscapes, Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. My recent writing includes 'Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean' (NewSouth 2018, University of Chicago Press 2019). Currently working on a history of Australians in Antarctica for the National Library of Australia.
I spent an inspiring afternoon at the ANU today, where the School of History celebrated recent books produced by staff, students and visitors (like me). So many great books: Mark Dawson, Bodies Complexioned: Human Variation and Racism in Early Modern English Culture, c.1600-1750 (Alex Cook) Michelle Arrow and Angela Woollacott (eds), Everyday Revolutions: Remaking Gender, … More A celebration of history
What a great initiative – Writing WA and Writing NSW have joined forces to produce an annual writers’ festival dedicated to science. This year was Perth’s turn, and the two-day program was filled with excellent panel discussions about everything from orangutans to oceans. I participated in the ocean-themed panel with co-panellists marine scientist Paul Hardisty … More Quantum Words Perth
The Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) is conducting its annual Open Science Conference in Hobart, Tasmania, on 3-7 August 2020. SCAR has an active humanities and social sciences (HASS) community, and the HASS team has issued a call for abstracts as followed: Abstract submission for the upcoming SCAR Open Science Conference in Hobart, Australia (3-7 August 2020) is now … More SCAR 2020 conference, Hobart – call for papers from humanities and social sciences
In early May I had the amazing opportunity to give some presentations in London and Dublin to coincide with the international release of Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean by the University of Chicago Press in April 2019. My first port of call, after the long-haul flight from Canberra, was the Natural History … More Talking Southern Ocean history … in London and Dublin!
Book and media reviews from the journal Science, edited by Valerie Thompson. By Louise Fabiani 9 April, 2019 Of the vast, largely unknown marine environment, the most mysterious section arguably lies at the bottom of the world. In Wild Sea, historian Joy McCann has written a brief but delightfully comprehensive history of the Southern Ocean, … More ‘A major player in weather, climate, and biodiversity, the waters around Antarctica take center stage in a new history’
Littered with wrecks, the Southern Ocean contains the point on the globe farthest from any land rescue Katrina Gulliver The Spectator (UK), 8 June 2019. ‘Below the Forties there is no law, and below the Fifties there is no God.’ Most sailors know some version of this saying, referring to the dangerous waters more than … More ‘The wildest waters in the world’
