About

Cassandra Atherton is an is an international expert on the prose poetry form and an award-winning prose poet. She is co-author of the definitive book on the form—Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton UP, 2020). Her specialization in prose poetry extends to the democratisation of poetry, focusing on poets as public intellectuals, specifically hibakusha poets. Cassandra was a Visiting Scholar in English at Harvard University sponsored by Professor Stephen Greenblatt and has been part of the Harvard University public intellectual symposia. Cassandra has authored and edited over thirty critical and creative books and has been invited to edit twelve special editions of leading refereed journals. Cassandra’s prose poetry has been widely anthologized both nationally and internationally and has been translated into Japanese, Korean and Chinese. She has been awarded the Sanlane prize, a Blanc literary award, the University of California Mary Schroeder award and has been a successful recipient of more than fifteen national and international research grants and teaching awards including, most recently, VicArts grants and Australian Council Grants for her work on atomic bomb poetry and book of poetic biographies of the elderly. She is a sought after interviewer after her widely publicized interviews with American intellectuals such as Harold Bloom, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Greenblatt, Camille Paglia, and Howard Zinn. Cassandra is commissioning editor for Westerly Magazine, Axon: Creative Explorations, and series editor for Spineless Wonders annual microliterature anthologies

Carolyn writes about Australian cultural, political, and policy history—and has a particular enthusiasm for the ways that history can inform and improve contemporary society. Carolyn is an ARC DECRA fellow, and is currently researching a history of how Australians have regarded their federation since 1901. Previously, she has written about how we remember the First World War in Anzac: The Unauthorised Biography (New South, 2014) and The Great War: Aftermath and Commemoration (UNSW Press, 2019), the latter edited with Keir Reeves. With James Walter, Carolyn is writing a history of political decision-making in Australia, and with colleagues at Deakin and Warwick University she is researching the history of public health care, including Medicare, in Australia. Outside work, Carolyn enjoys cooking, pottering in the veggie patch, cycling (both outdoors and on the indoor trainer), and wheat beer.

Mia Martin Hobbs is an oral historian of war and its legacies. Her research interests include the Vietnam War, the War on Terror, memory, trauma, place, gender, peace, and security.

Mia completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2018. Her doctoral project was a transnational oral history with Australian and American Vietnam veterans who returned to Viêt Nam after the War. Her first book, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys, was published by Cambridge University Press in October 2021. Through a researcher residency in the Digital Studio at the University of Melbourne, she is developing an interactive spatial-temporal of veterans’ journeys.

Mia is currently undertaking a second transnational oral history project with women and minorities who served in the US, UK, and Australian armed forces in the War on Terror. She has published on veteran memories and war narratives in The Australian Journal of Politics and History and Oral History Review, and written on contemporary issues surrounding veterans’ returns to Vietnam for Australian Policy History and The Conversation.

David Lowe holds a chair in contemporary history at Deakin. He is a historian of modern international relations and Australia in world affairs. He is also interested in the remembering of aspects of the recent past, and, with colleague Tony Joel, is series editor of Routledge’s Remembering the Modern World series.

David studied history at Monash University before completing a PhD at Cambridge, UK. With the exception of two years at the University of London in the mid-1990s and some shorter-term fellowships, he has been based at Deakin. His teaching focuses primarily on nineteenth and twentieth century international history, historiography, conflict and memory in modern Asia, and aspects of Australia in world affairs.

David has been involved in Deakin’s growth in humanities and social sciences research – for ten years between 2005 and 2014 he held the leadership roles of head of school, acting dean, and head of a research institute. During this period, with colleagues, he formed the Contemporary Histories Research Group and the Australian Policy and History Network. This network encourages historians to expose the historical dimensions of current policy problems, a theme that recurs in David’s work, and has resulted in his joining advisory and editorial groups with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

When he is not teaching or researching history, David is usually hiking and bird-spotting, extending his knowledge and experience of Australian wines, or puzzling over how he, a Hawthorn-supporter, survives in Geelong.

Andrew Singleton is Professor of Sociology and Social Research in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin. His work explores the interconnections between social and religious change, with a specific focus on Australia and the Global South. Recent research has explored teen religion and spirituality, and the history and current expressions of Spiritualism in Australia (the religion that contacts the dead). A social research practitioner, Andrew incorporates survey research, ethnography, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and archival research into his work. He is particularly interested in the application of mixed methods and deals in the dark arts of statistics. Before joining Deakin in 2015, Andrew taught in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University.

Associate Professor Tony Joel is the Discipline Convenor for History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. Courtesy of a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) research scholarship, Tony spent 18 months in Germany conducting archival and field research for his PhD during which time he was based at the University of Cologne. His two main research interests are sports history and the politics of war memory and commemoration. Along with Deakin colleague Prof. David Lowe, Tony is series editor of Routledge’s Remembering the Modern World series. Tony’s main teaching responsibilities involve chairing units on the Holocaust, sport in history, and a groundbreaking new unit on the history of Australian football. He has won multiple awards for his teaching, including at the national level as a recipient of an Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities and Arts in the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) in 2016.

When Tony is not researching or teaching about history, his greatest joy is spending time with his wife and four children. He also enjoys playing lawn bowls, riding his Opera Super Leonardo road bike, listening to music (usually Springsteen, Counting Crows, or Public Enemy), and re-watching Seinfeld. Tony spends (or is that wastes?) most of his free time watching live sport, in particular barracking for his beloved Richmond, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, and the Boston Red Sox. Indeed, often he can be found daydreaming of being back at Fenway Park.

Clare Corbould is an Associate Professor of history and co-convenor of the Contemporary Histories Research Group. Her expertise is in United States history with an emphasis on race, racism, and African American history. She is author of the award-winning Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem (Harvard, 2009) and co-editor of Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War (Massachusetts, 2013). Clare appears regularly in broadcast media, including ABC radio and television. She contributes to press media including the Conversation, the Guardian, and the Washington Post.