The CCH Executive is pleased to confirm the members of the new CCH Advisory Board. The new board will meet for the first time in September 2023. The members of the board are:

Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh

Shahram Akbarzadeh is Research Professor of Middle East & Central Asian Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute. He convenes the Middle East Studies Forum (MESF). He held the prestigious ARC Future Fellowship between 2013-2016, and was named as Australia’s leading researcher in Middle East and Islamic Studies (The Australian Special Report 2020).

Shahram has an active research interest in the politics of Central Asia, Islam, Muslims in Australia and the Middle East. He has been involved in organising a number of key conferences, including a Chatham House rule workshop on Australia’s relations with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan (2007), sponsored by the International Centre of Excellence for Asia Pacific Studies, and a conference on the Arab Revolution with Freedom House, sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Stephanie Bull

Stephanie Bull was appointed Director of MoAD in February 2023.  Ms Bull comes to the Museum after spending the past 19 years at the National Museum of Australia including as the Deputy Director for five years.  Ms Bull has an extensive history in the cultural sector, including at the Australian War Memorial.  Ms Bull has held a number of roles during her career in the sector, including in exhibitions, gallery redevelopment, international engagement and corporate services.  She commenced her career in the Department of Defence.  Ms Bull has a BA (Hons) majoring in Australian History.

Bob Gartland

Bob Gartland is an Affiliate member of the Centre for Contemporary Histories. After 40 highly successful years in business within the property sector, Bob Gartland’s focus has shifted away from commerce toward his lifelong passion for recording and collecting history, and a devotion to the Geelong community. Bob founded the Geelong Football Club’s History Society, and has chaired the Club’s Honouring the Past Committee and its History and Tradition Committee. In 2017, Bob was inducted as a Life Member of the Geelong Football Club. He was the 2022 recipient of the prestigious RJ Hickey Award for Outstanding Service to Australian Football.

Bob holds a Graduate Certificate in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies from Deakin University, and is the Kardina Park Historian.

Dr Charles Kraus

Charles Kraus, Ph.D., is the Deputy Director of the History and Public Policy Program at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C.. An accomplished scholar in the fields of modern Chinese history, international history, and Cold War studies, Charles spearheads many of the Wilson Center’s efforts to expand the public’s access to declassified archival sources, provide training to next-generation historians and other historically-minded experts, and bring historical context to public policy issues.

Charles oversees the Wilson Center Digital Archive, a critically acclaimed research and teaching resource utilized by hundreds of thousands of individuals each year. He also coordinates the work of the Cold War Archives Research (CWAR) Institute, the Cold War International History Project, the North Korea International Documentation Project, and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.

Dr Angus McCallum

Angus McCallum currently works at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. He received his PhD in Political Science from Deakin University in 2022, and still holds an academic interest in the focus of his thesis – the radical right. Angus also has an honours degree in History from Deakin.

Angus remains attached to the University through his teaching of first year International Relations, and his supervision of two Masters students. He currently lives in Yass just outside Canberra with his partner and their two dogs.

Dr Lachlan Strahan

Dr Lachlan Strahan is a writer, historian and former diplomat. During his 30-year career in DFAT, he served overseas in Bonn, Seoul, New Delhi (as Deputy High Commissioner), Geneva (as Chargé d’affaires at the UN mission) and Honiara (as High Commissioner). In Canberra, he ran the South Asia Division and the Multilateral Policy Division, overseeing Australia’s UN, human rights and gender equality policies.

Lachlan has written three history books to date. Australia’s China: changing perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s has become one of the standard works on Australia-China relations. Day of Reckoning traces a series of crimes in Papua New Guinea after the Second World War and was shortlisted for the 2006 NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize. Released in October 2022, Justice in Kelly Country tells the story of his great great grandfather, Senior Constable Anthony Strahan, who hunted the Kelly gang in the late nineteenth century. Lachlan lives in Canberra with his wife, Lily Petkovska, and is working on a fourth book.

Professor Jen Webb

Jen Webb is Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice, and Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. Recent books include Art and Human Rights: Contemporary Asian Contexts (Manchester UP, 2016); Gender and the Creative Labour Market (Palgrave 2022), and the poetry collections Moving Targets (Recent Work Press, 2018) and Flight Mode (with Shé Hawke; RWP, 2020). She is co-editor of the literary journal Meniscus and the scholarly journal Axon: Creative Explorations. Her scholarly work focuses on the ethics of representation, and on the field of creative practice; her poetry focuses on material poetics and questions of seeing and being.