CHRG Seminar Series 2022

Alistair Thomson – Being there: Indigenous Australian fathering in the twenty-first century

I’m part of a team researching and writing a history of Australian fathering over the last century. The fifth phase of the book focuses on the years from 1996 to 2019, and includes a chapter with the working title, ‘Being there: Indigenous Australian fathers in the twenty-first century’. Indigenous fathers in the early twenty-first century have faced ferocious criticism and daunting challenges. While some have struggled against the odds, others have responded to these challenges, both individually and collectively, in culturally-distinctive ways. In this talk I’ll introduce those challenges and responses, focusing in particular on an Indigenous fathering ‘movement’ that grew out of men’s health programs and took off around Australia in the late 1990s.

Alistair Thomson is a Professor of History at Monash and member of an ARC-funded team researching the history of Australian fathering that also includes Kate Murphy, Johnny Bell and Jill Barnard from Monash, John Murphy from the University of Melbourne, and Michael Roper from Essex University.

Join us at Waurn Ponds (IC2.108), Burwood (Burwood Corporate Centre) or on Zoom.