Feeling very honoured to have Wild Sea shortlisted for the ACT Book of the Year 2019 and to receive a ‘Highly Commended’ award at the announcement by the ACT Minister for Arts, Creative Industries and Cultural Events on 6 February.

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!

The University of Chicago Press is publishing Wild Sea on 22 April 2019, and I’m thrilled to see it sporting its gorgeous whale tail in a hard cover! Thanks to UCP for reaching out to a far wider audience across the high seas, to The Atlantic Monthly for publishing an excerpt in its April edition, and … More Wild Sea embarks on an international adventure!

Thanks to the National Library of Australia for hosting an excellent event yesterday to coincide with its Cook and the Pacific exhibition. I was absolutely delighted to be there, talking about Cook’s second voyage and his legacy of maritime exploration and science in the Southern Ocean. After four days of 40+ degrees C during the … More Keeping cool at the NLA