History Council Victoria

Melbourne's statues overwhelmingly depict powerful white men and represent a narrow selection of our history. Recent campaigns to increase the representation of women and Indigenous Australians in Melbourne statues and memorials have begun to change the public face of Melbourne's past and present. This Making Public Histories webinar will explore challenges and opportunities for recreating Melbourne statues and memorials and […]

How do embassies engage in projections of culture, sometimes also called 'soft power'? What is the role of Australian Studies in connection with 'official' activities overseas? Recent years have seen increasing attention paid to such questions. For example, a recent co-edited volume (Kate Darian-Smith and David Lowe), The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia-Japan Relations (ANU Press 2023), […]

Historian Joan Beaumont’s books Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (2013) and Australia’s Great Depression (2022) offer profound reinterpretations of those pivotal events of the early twentieth century. In conversation with Alistair Thomson (Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend, 2013), Joan will reflect on what brought her to the study of the Great War and the Great Depression, […]

How do museums create exhibitions about histories? What happens behind the scenes? And what really is the role of an exhibition as a form of history ‘made public’? Making history exhibitions can be a complex task: agreeing on topics, gathering resources, selecting stories and themes, using collections and even leaving space for change. Stakeholders are […]