Externally funded research

David Hundt and David Lowe have been awarded $32,321 from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (Saluting Their Service grants scheme) for their project, Witnesses to war and peace: Australian recollections of Korea and Koreans, 1953–2023. The project focuses on how Australian veterans of the Korean War (1950–53), as well as those servicemen and women who have been part of Australian missions to the Military Armistice Commission in ensuing decades, understand the significance of their collective efforts. Its goal is to explore veterans’ perceptions of how their service during and after the war has contributed to the social, political, and economic development of South Korea during the past seven decades, as well as to the development of bilateral relations between Australia and South Korea. In addition to scholarly publications, it will produce a digitised oral history of Australians in Korea.

The Gandel Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness in Australia Survey (GHKAS/Gandel Holocaust Survey) is Australia’s first comprehensive national survey of Holocaust knowledge and awareness.

After decades of lobbying, in the 1993-94 season Geelong Cricket Club (GCC) was finally admitted to Victorian Premier Cricket. It was a monumental development as GCC became the first non-metropolitan club to join the state’s elite-level pennant competition. To mark its 30th anniversary in Victorian Premier Cricket, GCC commissioned Deakin historians AsPr Tony Joel and Dr Mathew Turner to write the club’s history. As club president, Dr Michael King was chiefly responsible for establishing the project in 2021 and overseeing it through to completion when the book Line & Length was co-launched by GCC and the Centre for Contemporary Histories at GMHA Stadium in February 2024.

Australia’s Embassy in Tokyo’s buildings, its gardens and grounds, and, above all, its occupants—from senior Australian diplomats to locally engaged staff—are the focus of this multidimensional study by former diplomats and expert observers of Australia’s engagement with Japan. Drawing on oral histories, memoirs, and archives, this volume sheds new light on the complexity of Australia’s diplomatic work in Japan, and the role of the embassy in driving high-level negotiations as well as fostering soft‑power influences.

The project resulted in the publication of a book, The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations, published by ANU Press.

Working in partnership with five Victorian outer metro and regional councils, this project promotes poetry as a way to connect with and convey the experiences of Victorians who suffer and/or are impacted by mental health issues. The project aims to recognise and raise awareness of the diversity of mental health and wellbeing issues experienced by the Australian population, and to use poetry as a creative platform through which to connect otherwise disconnected communities to instil a sense of sharing, belonging and catharsis through creativity. The project is led by Professor Cassandra Atherton (Deakin) and Assoc Prof Jessica Wilkinson (RMIT).

Mia Martin Hobbs was awarded an Early Career Small Grant from the Freilich Project in 2019 to research the experiences of women and minority veterans in Western militaries in the War on Terror. Focussing on the first oral history interviews collected with US forces that deployed to Iraq, Dr Martin Hobbs found that women and minority soldiers showed insight into the problems of racialized and gendered warfare, and accurately predicted that the US would remain embroiled in Iraq for decades to come. However, she also found that the skills and strengths of a diverse military were often overlooked or dismissed by superiors, because they contradicted the broader mission of ‘nation-building’ in Iraq.

Dr Martin Hobbs presented some of her findings at the Freilich Showcase in March 2023, and published a reflective piece drawing on her research on the 20^th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq in The Conversation.