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
A friend kindly sent me a cutting from the Australian with Wild Sea listed as recommended Christmas reading. Justine Hyde of the State Library of Victoria also tweeted over the Christmas break, saying that she was reading Wild Sea on a beach holiday by the Southern Ocean. She said: ‘It’s a fabulous natural history book … More Christmas reading
It has been a year since my voyage into the Southern Ocean. Here are a few reminders of the rhythm of life in this region at the beginning of the brief summer season.
While oral histories have been used as a source of information about marine species and ecosystems in the past, this article explores how oral histories of fishers and divers can be read as narratives about human relationships with marine environments and animals. We propose that in listening closely to people who have long and intimate … More Marine oral history: a new genre?
Out of the blue 