Members

Dr Gwyn McClelland holds a Master of Divinity from the University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Japanese history from Monash University. Gwyn was a secondary teacher of Japanese and Geography for some twenty years and while doing his PhD at Monash he taught in Education (Bilingualism and Languages Methodology), History, and the Japanese language. In 2019, he coordinated a modern Chinese history unit at Monash University, ‘The Fall and Rise of Modern China’. Gwyn is the winner of the 2019 John Legge prize for best thesis in Asian Studies, awarded by the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA). Gwyn has taught at Monash, RMIT, Deakin, and Melbourne Universities and he has participated in recent workshops at Copenhagen University (Center for Contemporary Buddhist Studies) and the University of California, Berkeley. His monograph, based on his work interviewing Catholic survivors of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, was published in 2019 by Routledge in Mark Selden’s ‘Asia’s Transformations’ series and is entitled Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives.

Heather Brown completed her PhD at Deakin in 2022. Her thesis title is ‘Interrogating Postfeminist Female Empowerment in Bestselling Postmillennial Young Adult Literature’.

Female protagonists are often praised for being ‘empowered’ because they perform gender differently, exercise choice and demonstrate agency. This thesis challenges this assertion through an examination of four tropes of empowerment: feminine masquerade, ‘sex-positive’ sexuality, authentic individualism and the ‘strong’ female character in the bestselling young adult literature titles Kiera Cass’s The Selection (2012-14), Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008-10), Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me (2011-14), Veronica Roth’s Divergent (2011-13), Kiera Cass’s The Heir (2015), Kody Keplinger’s The DUFF (2011), Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars (2006) and Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass (2012-15) series. It demonstrates that the female protagonists reflect the postfeminist empowerment discourse which rejects the second-wave characterisation of women as universal victims of patriarchy, by emphasising choice and agency as a means to power. However, using Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance and discursive constraint in conjunction with critical scholarship on postfeminism, this thesis argues that the representation of female empowerment is more complex than mere agency or choice. By analysing the mechanisms that enable empowerment, it shows that although female protagonists can perform gender differently and defy patriarchal discourses, empowerment remains highly gendered, and secondary (mostly) male characters have a significant role in discursive production. The misinterpretation, regulation or approbation of secondary characters frequently overrides the female protagonists’ re-signification of existing gendered discourse and performative acts, and affects the female protagonists’ ability to access power. Reflecting the contradictions and complexities of the postfeminist real-world context, this thesis ultimately demonstrates how postfeminist female empowerment can be both complex and frequently illusory. Attempts to re-signify existing discourse is often superseded by others, and seemingly subversive acts can uphold traditional patriarchal discourse under the guise of choice.

Associate Professor Helen Gardner is an historian of the broader Oceania, including Australia and the Pacific Islands through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her interests include colonialism and post-colonialism in the Pacific. She is active in the Pacific History Association and is the external editor of the Journal of Pacific History.

Helen Young is a Lecturer in the Writing, Literature and Culture Group who researches and teaches contemporary and historical popular cultures, especially speculative and historical genres. Racism and constructions of race, gender and medievalisms in texts, including fiction, television and videogames, and fandom are particular research interests. Helen is the author of Race and Popular Fantasy: Habits of Whiteness (2016) and Constructing “England” in the Fourteenth Century: A Postcolonial Interpretation of Middle English Romance (2010), series editor of Bloomsbury New Directions in Medieval Studies, and a member of the editorial board of the Bloomsbury series Perspectives on Fantasy, the Journal of Tolkien Studies and the Journal of Historical Fictions, and of the international advisory board for the Bloomsbury Medieval Studies digital resource.

Helen is co-convenor of the Faculty of Arts and Education Early- and Mid-Career Researcher network, and is President of the Australia and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies and the Tales After Tolkien Society. Helen has been short-listed for the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Society Award,  and has been interviewed and written for outlets including The Conversation, The Guardian, newsy.com, The Huffington Post, the ABC and local radio.

PhD Thesis Title (Working): ‘Australian Foreign Policy towards Japan’s Changing International Status: From a Former Enemy to an Economic Power’ 

Hirokazu’s PhD thesis will deal with the Australia-Japan political relations during the early Cold War, especially over developments in South East Asia. This aspect of the Australia-Japan relations during that era has not been paid much attention by existing literature which tended to argue that trade had dominated the bilateral relations especially until the 1970s and that developments in other aspects came after the 1970s-1980s. However, since both Australia and Japan were among key regional actors, their interactions regarding political developments in their region can be regarded as a potentially important theme in considering the history of the post-WWII Asia–Pacific and thus deserve scholarly attention.

His thesis will examine; (1) how the then Australian government perceived and responded to a rapid change in Japan’s international status in the 1950s and the 1960s; (2) what kind of relationship Australia and Japan built over their region, especially South East Asia during these decades; (3) factors that facilitated cooperation between Australia and Japan regarding regional affairs, if any; (4) limitations that were imposed on this relationship, and; (5) how this relationship had an implication for wider regional environment, especially regional organisations involved in aid to developing countries in Asia.

His thesis will be able to contribute original knowledge by testing whether a narrative centered on economic complementarity between Australia and Japan can be applied to other aspects of the bilateral relations. Also, His ability to integrate Japanese archival sources with Australian, British and American ones will enable his thesis to apply a fresh perspective to the post-WWII Australia-Japan relations.  

My PhD research investigates how female resisters operating in occupied France have been remembered since World War II, and the evolving story of how their wartime service has been recognised and commemorated in subsequent decades. The primary case study focuses on the thirty-nine female agents deployed by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and incorporates comparative examples that emerge in female members, and leaders, of the French resistance. The project investigates the complexities of war remembrance from the differing national perspectives of Britain and France, and the impact and complexities of the Gaullist myth of resistance. The exclusionary nature of this revisionist perspective of France’s ‘Dark Years’ significantly impacted the recognition of women in the resistance in official honours and commemorative recognition. I am working under the supervision of Associate Professor Tony Joel, Professor David Lowe, and Pam Maclean in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Prior to commencing my PhD candidature in October 2022 I completed a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University, and a Graduate Diploma in Art History at the University of Adelaide. I moved to Deakin to pursue an Honours degree in History in 2021, and recently earned my Diploma of Languages in French Studies from the University of Newcastle.

Dr Ian Warren is a senior lecturer with research interests spanning numerous criminological subject areas. He has written widely on comparative criminology, illicit drug regulation, the use of technology to prevent crime, the relationship between surveillance and privacy, and the relationship between crime and sport.

Jacqui Baker graduated with a PhD from Deakin University in 2023. Her thesis, titled ‘Finding the “Somewhere” of Women’s Liberation in Melbourne: An Oral History, 1960s-Present’, draws out references to places, spaces and travel in participants’ oral history testimonies and examines the way that women’s liberation was practised in everyday life to understand how the movement changed over time and space. Broadly, her research interests include: feminism, gender, sexuality, place and space, cultural and social groups, histories of reading and 20^th century Australian history. She works as a sessional academic and is the general editor of Australian Policy and History. She has had research published in Lilith: A Feminist History Journal.

Outside of academia, Jacqui works as a heritage services officer and is occasionally a fills presenter on community radio.

Building off research for his honours thesis, which examined the early Australian goldmining expeditions to Woodlark Island, Papua New Guinea, Jarrod is interested in the colonial experiences and cultural memories of both Australians and Papua New Guineans, and how these memories are represented in the present. 

His PhD research focuses in on the Papua New Guinean island-town of Samarai, which was once a developed commercial and administrative hub of the British and Australian administered colonial territories. Today little of Samarai remains, and it is frequently characterised as a ‘ghost-town’ for its crumbling architecture and run-down streetscapes. Yet Samarai is also home to a vibrant population of Papua New Guineans who have reclaimed the island and developed a community amongst the colonial ruins.  

Jarrod’s research asks just what the term ‘ghost-town’ means, especially in a region with few other ghost towns such as the Pacific. Jarrod examines how the ‘ghost-town’ label functions to promote certain histories and minimise others. Do places like Samarai function as memorials to the local people?  What stories do they preserve and how does this speak to way that histories are created in postcolonial societies?  

Led by his Supervisor, Dr Jonathan Ritchie, Jarrod’s research will consist of interviews with past and present residents of Samarai. These interviews will provide a voice to the people who the ‘ghost-town’ label effects most, helping us understand how cultural narratives can develop from the tropes and labels of history.   

Jason has worked extensively with Aboriginal custodians throughout Australia on history, museum, and heritage related projects and conducted detailed fieldwork in central Australia for the past 15 years. His recent book is Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection (2020) examines the making of one of Australia’s most important anthropological collections and its relevance to Anmatyerr and Arrernte people.

Jason has worked as a consultant anthropologist to a number of government and non-government agencies, and also as a Repatriation Curator with the Melbourne Museum’s First Peoples Department and has taught Indigenous Studies at Monash University. His research explores cross-cultural approaches to custodianship, the history of anthropology, Indigenous cultural heritage management and Central Australian song and ceremonial traditions.

He is the Lead Chief Investigator of the Collecting at the Crossroads: Anthropology, Art and Cultural Change (1939-85) Australian Research Council Linkage Project. This project applies current scholarship on museum collecting practices, art and anthropology to produce a better understanding of one of Australia’s most significant, yet little known, collections of Aboriginal art and culture —the Berndt Museum collection.

When not working, Jason can be found river and sea kayaking, camping, and bush walking.

Jason Taliadoros (LLB BA (Hons) PhD Melb, GCHE Deakin) is an Associate Professor in the Deakin Law School. Prior to joining the Deakin Law School, Jason was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of History and sessional teacher in the Faculty of Law, at Monash University betyween 2008 and 2011. Prior to this he was a Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow at Siena College (USA) between 2004 and 2005. Jason has been an academic visitor to the Melbourne Law School in 2014 and 2019 and the Stephan Kuttner Institute for Medieval Canon Law in Munich in 2010 and 2014.

My research topic is about the economic history of microeconomic reforms in Australia.

I want to understand whether the 1980s and 1990s truly was a golden era of policy reform (as maintained by some), and if so, what made it so. This raises questions about whether microeconomic reform has become a lot harder to implement today, and if so why? These questions are extremely relevant to policy makers in Australia as they search for ways to ‘reset’ the economy in response to the global and Australian economic crisis. The questions motivating my research have been partially addressed in the economics, political science and history literature, and the resulting perspectives are, not surprisingly, very different.

There is no existing piece of work that brings these different viewpoints together to satisfactorily explain Australia’s experience with microeconomic reform since the 1980s.  

Joan Beaumont is Professor Emerita at the ANU and Honorary Professor with the Contemporary Histories Research Group.

Joan Beaumont is an internationally recognized historian of Australia in the two world wars, Australian defence and foreign policy, the history of prisoners of war and the memory and heritage of war. Her most recent research has resulted in a major monograph on Australia in the Great Depression, to be published in 2022. Her publications include the critically acclaimed Broken Nation: Australians and the Great War (Allen & Unwin, 2013) and, with Allison Cadzow (eds), Serving Our Country: Indigenous Australians, war defence and citizenship (NewSouth 2018). Past appointments include Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at the ANU (2010-11) and Dean of Arts  at Deakin University Victoria (1998-2008). She is an Honorary Professor at Deakin University, Professor Emerita at ANU, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs; and a member the Editorial Advisory Board of Historical Documents of Australian Foreign Policy, DFAT. She graduated from the University of Adelaide (BA Hons 1969) and the University of London (King’s College) (PhD 1975).

Joanna is a Senior Lecturer in History, with particular expertise in the history of religion in Australia and the British Empire. She came to Deakin in 2009, after completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne. Much of Joanna’s recent research has examined how religious ideas and institutions helped form (or undermined) the racial hierarchies established through the British Empire. Her most recent book (co-authored with Patricia Grimshaw) is White Women, Aboriginal Missions and Australian Settler Governments: Maternal Contradictions (Brill, 2019). Joanna regularly contributes to public discussion about the role of religion in contemporary society through press and broadcast media.

Dr John Doyle is a honorary research fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University and a senior researcher and adviser at Brighton Grammar School. His current research focuses on intersections between secondary and tertiary education, the future of work and careers, and the politics of Australian telecommunications reform. John has been a tutor and postdoctoral researcher at La Trobe and coordinated the university’s Victorian Parliamentary Internship program. He previously worked on regulatory policy and strategy in the telecommunications sector and on foreign affairs and defence for the federal government. 

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