Newsletter

  • Professor Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford) : Moving History: Critical Thinking, ECR Workshop

    Professor Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford): Moving History: Critical Thinking, ECR workshop

    Date: Tuesday 29 September 2026

    Time: 3:00pm – 5:00pm AEST

    Venue: Upper East Room, University House, The University of Melbourne

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/moving-history-workshop-vic

    This free in-person workshop, led by Professor Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford), will explore creative approaches to historical practice. Together, we will work with primary sources, secondary materials and your own research to help you develop your critical and creative thinking through a combination of focused textual analytical tasks alongside short, physical and innovative thought exercises – all designed to stimulate original and incisive analysis!

    By the end of the course, we will have:

    • thought critically and creatively about historical arguments made by scholars
    • explored the differences and connections between evidence and argument
    • considered how we can write with clarity and precision
    • analysed the strengths and weaknesses of AI summaries of articles
    • used movement as a stimulus for creative and critical thinking

    This is an experimental and innovative in-person workshop open to anyone with an interest in the relationship between exercise and creativity.

    The course has been designed for HDR History students.

  • AAH & Holberg Prize Lecture Series: 2026 Holberg Prize Laureate, Professor Lyndal Roper FAHA FBA

    Join the Australian Academy of the Humanities, in partnership with the Holberg Prize, for a series of free, public lectures across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, delivered by 2026 Holberg Prize Laureate, Professor Lyndal Roper FAHA FBA.

    Lyndal Roper is Emeritus Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford. She was the first woman to hold the Regius Chair in History, and the first Australian. Roper’s most recent publication, Summer of Fire and Blood: A History of the German Peasants’ War (1524-6) details the greatest uprising in western Europe before the French Revolution (Winner, Cundill Prize 2025). She has written a biography of the reformer Martin Luther and has published on witchcraft and on gender and the German Reformation. She has lived and worked in Germany (where she held a Humboldt Fellowship and was Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg). She was a graduate of the University of Melbourne and holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Melbourne and the University of Basel. She is the Holberg Laureate 2026.

    ‘Dr Liar’ meets ‘The Devil Himself’: Martin Luther and Thomas Müntzer

    Date: 23 September 2026

    Time: 5.30 – 8.00pm AEST

    Venue: Forgan Smith Building, Room 1-E109, The University of Queensland

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/aah-holberg-uq-lecture-2026

    Join Lyndal as she explores Luther and Müntzer’s connection to the Peasants’ War and to one another; and how the afterlife of their enmity has shaped modern Germany.

    History and Commemoration: Cycling the German Peasants’ War of 1525

    Date: 25 September 2026

    Time: 12.30 – 2.30pm AEST

    Venue: The Law Foyer, Law School Building, The University of Sydney

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/aah-holberg-unisyd-lecture-2026

    Join Lyndal as she reflects on the importance of experiencing history for her research and writing of Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War, Winner of the 2025 Cundill History Prize.

    Brotherhood: Gender and the German Peasants’ War
    1524-26

    Date: 30 September 2026

    Time: 5.30 – 7.30pm AEST

    Venue: Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, The University of Melbourne

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/2026-academy-lecture

    Join Lyndal as she delivers the 2026 Annual Academy Lecture, on how masculinity and brotherhood underpinned the German Peasants’ War; and how the roles and voices of women have been remembered.

  • Call for EOI: Premodern Relationalities Roundtable

    Transforming Premodern Pasts through Indigenous Knowledges

    Tuesday 22 September, 2026, Macquarie University, Sydney

    Expressions of Interest are invited from researchers of the premodern world, from HDR to senior scholars, who would like to participate in a roundtable on Premodern Relationalities to be held 9.30-5.00pm Tuesday 22 September 2026, at Macquarie University, in the Wingaru Learning Space, Macquarie University. This is a discussion-based event. Participants will not offer presentations, but will complete pre-circulated readings in preparation for the sessions to take place on the day, which will involve group discussion.

    ‘Indigenous relationality’ is an ethical-epistemological framework that looks beyond geopolitical maps to recognise the interconnectedness of Indigenous worldviews, identities, values and peoples. Research on relationalities is future-oriented, arguing for how Indigenous ways of balance, care, and community support thrivance in the wake of colonialism. Recently, Indigenous and ally scholars in early historical disciplines such as medieval studies have started looking to relationalities as a framework for tracing intercultural connections across the medieval world and understanding Indigenous presence in premodernity.

    The roundtable will enable an innovative convergence of historical and futurist research. Of particular interest are:

    • how an Indigenous relationalities lens can transform our idea of the global past
    • how historical research can offer powerful case studies of Indigenous relationalities across time and space.

    This event seeks to create a dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. It will be led by visiting scholars Dr Tarren Andrews (Yale) and Dr Madi Williams (Canterbury), in conjunction with Prof Louise D’Arcens (Macquarie).

    There are limited places available. Interested researchers are asked to contact Louise D’Arcens (louise.darcens@mq.edu.au) by Friday 11 September with preferred contact details for the pre-readings, plus a paragraph outlining their research interests and reasons for wishing to participate in the roundtable.   

    This event is generously supported by the Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, and is a complementary event to the Indigenous Relationalities Symposium, which will be held on 23-24 September in the Centre for Global Indigenous Futures (CGIF), Macquarie University.  

    Full information including speaker biographies is available in the flyer below:

    Premodern Relationalities Roundtable SeptemberDownload

  • Attend: Limina Schism Conference, 16th October, The University of Western Australia

    Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies invites you to its annual conference, Schism – an interdisciplinary humanities conference exploring dualities and contradictions, ruptures and divisions, departures, tensions, and frayed edges.

    In our contemporary world, we face the continuing ruptures of things we once thought whole and solid. From institutions and ideologies to our understanding of the past and of ourselves, schism could be said to be a defining feature of our experience today.

    Limina invites attendees to engage with fresh perspectives, connect ideas across disciplines, and consider why the study of the humanities matters today. Join us for a day of thought-provoking conversation and discovery.

    The conference will run on Friday, 16th October from 9am – 5pm and will be held in Margaret Fairweather Education Space (103.G01), Hackett Hall, The University of Western Australia. Tickets include a keynote address by Dr Shino Konishi, a series of diverse panels, and end-of-day workshop on zine making led by Sunday Sapphics.

    Tickets available at: https://events.humanitix.com/limina-schism-conference

  • Lecture: Kinship Colonialism: Female Authority in an Irish-Caribbean Dynasty with Professor Christine Walker (Hong King University),

    11am, Monday 28 September 2026
    ACU Melbourne

    Drawing on research from her new book project, “Imperial Kin,” this talk highlights the instrumental roles played by elite Irish families in expanding English and French interests in the Americas. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland divested local rulers of their property and status and forced them into exile. Certain Irish noble families migrated to English and French settlements in the Caribbean, where their early investments in racialized plantation slavery quickly rebuilt lost fortunes. At the same time, these groups purposefully manipulated heredity, turning the riches generated by enslaved laborers into dynastic power. Successive generations of kin intermarried, and first-cousin matches were common.

    Women played central roles in executing this novel yet potent blend of colonialism and consanguinity. Female relatives forged essential marriage alliances, commanded thousands of enslaved people, acted as patrons, and birthed numerous children. They established an intimate form of rule that relied on the destruction of Indigenous communities and the exploitation of enslaved people. Within decades, groups who had lost everything in Ireland ruled some of the most lucrative colonies in the Americas

    Register to join in person or online: https://forms.gle/AzRsDaE78Due33RY7

  • CFP: Singing History: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Ballads and the Past, 11-12 November, 2027 at the National Library of Australia, Canberra

    For centuries, the news was sung. As soon as a newsworthy event occurred, ballads were composed, set to familiar tunes, and passed on orally. Printed ballads were sold on busy streets and marketplaces by street singers, who would sing the song as a way of advertising their wares. Ballads combined news, entertainment, and moral lessons in a format designed for maximum dissemination, whatever the literacy rate. They are therefore excellent sources for examining how ordinary people – rather than just educated elites – were encouraged to understand the society in which they lived. Songs told the news of disasters, politics, crime and punishment, military conflicts, and sports. They also sang about workers and labour protests, emigration and new lands, and they told stories of heartbreak, loss, and victory. Ballads were often deliberately sensationalist, consciously seeking to manipulate our emotions.

    This conference will explore not only this long-standing European tradition of mass media, but also trace its evolution – through transportation ballads and songs about convict shipwrecks – to 19th-century Australia, a land already rich with Indigenous musical culture. Here, topical songs were often printed in newspapers, and editors commissioned ballads as a way to invent a romanticised image of the fledgling colony. How did this European practice engage – or not – with Australian Indigenous culture, the longest sustained traditions of song in the world?

    We invite talks and performances from a range of disciplines that will highlight the multi-media aspects of song and balladry in all its forms, including lyric, music, image, material form, performance, and practice in Europe, Australia, and beyond.

    We are also interested in how the digital humanities have transformed our understanding of historical song. How can we use technologies and tools of the 21st century to bring songs from the past to a modern audience? How can existing databases, such as those documenting Australia’s convict history, be linked to those cataloguing song, such as convict ballads? Trove has become an indispensable tool for contextualising the past, but how can we use it to connect and expand these linkages historically, contextually, and digitally?

    This 2-day gathering at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, will bring together historians, literary scholars, singers, musicians, musicologists, art historians, folklorists and folk song practitioners, scholars in digital humanities, archivists, librarians, and anyone interested in topics such as, but not limited to:

    • ballads, songs, and balladry
    • how popular song figures in musicology
    • folklore and folk song studies
    • singers, songwriters, and the songwriting process
    • the history of news, news media, and ‘fake news’
    • political history, military history, colonial history
    • convict history, convict ballads
    • Australian history, Indigenous history, diasporic histories (including the many emigrant groups to Australia)
    • music and nation-building, national and sporting anthems
    • protest songs
    • maritime and shipwreck history, sea shanties
    • history of sports and sports songs
    • digital history, digital humanities, digital cultural heritage
    • archives, Trove, libraries (esp. digitised collections)
    • print media, print culture
    • visual material culture, broadsides

    Keynote speakers include:
    Professor Siv Gøril Brandtzæg (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), expert in Comparative Literature, broadside ballads and digital humanities.

    Dr Angela McShane (Warwick University), social and cultural historian of balladry in Britain.

    The conference will also launch the database Singing the News, hosted by the Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS) at the
    Australian National University.

    Submission Details:
    Given the many disciplines that study song, we invite a range of conference formats: traditional papers and panels, but also lightning talks, workshops (such as singing, music or dance lessons), and performances – feel free to get in touch to discuss ideas you might have about presentation formats.

    Please submit abstracts of c.250 words, plus a short bio (100 words) by 30 March 2027 to SingingHistory2027@gmail.com with the subject line “Singing History 2027 Proposal”. Notifications of acceptance will be provided by the end of May. If you need earlier confirmation for travel or funding purposes, write to SingingHistory2027@gmail.com.

  • CFP: Unsettling Shakespeare, 2027 ANZSA Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, 10–12 February 2027.

    The Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association invites you to explore the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries across places, times, languages, and cultures.

    Taking place in Te Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington at Te Herenga Waka | ‘the mooring place of canoes’, the conference takes its lead from this sense of travel, arrival, and the sharing of knowledge, and looks to foster diverse, detailed, and multi-perspectival approaches to Shakespeare from across the world.

    We encourage approaches that foreground questions of place, identity and belonging; settler colonial culture and Indigeneity; travel, mobility, and cross-cultural encounter; and reception, transmission, adaptation, and translation.

    We also invite you to unsettle Shakespeare in other ways—and we welcome any submissions that contribute new approaches to Shakespeare in his worlds and in ours.

    Our call for papers is now open!

    We are delighted to announce two of our keynote speakers – with more to come!

  • Book Launch: Antipodean Renaissance

    On Saturday 5th September, Louis Green’s posthumous memoir “Antipodean Renaissance,” will be launched.

    The launch will be held at Lauraine Diggins Fine Art (5 Malakoff St, North Caulfield) from 2pm – 4pm. Guests are invited to register at https://www.trybooking.com/DONYC

    For those who cannot be there, hardback copies can be purchased here:  https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=ZibsjMr2nb7gYwwrRbS0QQkbjh464Uiwgqql3xACD9B

  • Growing Up in the Early Modern World: Children, Institutions and Belonging Workshop

    Beginning on 11 November and held over 5 weeks, this workshop and seminar series invites scholars to reconsider the role of institutions in the lives of children. While a robust body of work already exists regarding early modern children and the various institutions that managed them, the organisers note that significantly less attention has been paid to these spaces as the literal sites where children “grow up.”

    Institutions were a defining feature of the early modern landscape for children across all social strata. Some were shuffled through foundling hospitals and wet nurses shortly after birth, while others spent their formative years in schools, reformatories, or workhouses. Because different institutions catered to specific life stages, a child might move through a succession of these environments over a lifetime—from infancy to the point where an institution might provide a dowry to facilitate their entry into adulthood.

    This workshop explores childhood within institutional settings in the early modern world, with particular attention to experiences of care, discipline, and education across their life course.

    Register your interest here; https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScvWF7AogXT-61TTzIGF7RxlSXEGA152OaCYN0_Zo3Sp1-DuQ/viewform

    Seminar Series: Online November 10-December 12 | Times TBC

    Workshop: Thursday 26 November 2026 | 9:00 AM-5:00 PM (AEDT, UTC+11), Macquarie University

    Contact: paula.plastic@mq.edu.au 

  • The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Rising Star Grant

    The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship is delighted to open the call for applications for this year’s Rising Star Grant, due October 15th.

    The Rising Star Award ($500) supports the work of BIPOC medieval studies scholars whose work addresses the intersections of two or more of the following areas: race, gender, sexuality, disability, and social justice. This award particularly seeks to support work focused on medieval law/legal discourse; the work of scholar-activists; and/or those researching historical dimensions of racial justice issues.

    The award is intended to support BIPOC medieval scholars who are in early stages of their career (e.g. graduate students and early career researchers), independent scholars, or members of the academic precariat, in an effort to provide timely, meaningful support and to help their work become visible to the larger scholarly community. It is intended for the development of a conference paper, a journal article, or a dissertation chapter. 

    For more information, visit https://smfsweb.org/smfs-rising-star-grant/ or reach out to Suzanne Edwards (sme6@lehigh.edu) with any questions.

  • Eighteenth-Century Futures: A HDR Symposium, University of Sydney, 3 December 2026

    A/Prof Nicola Parsons and Dr Hamish Wood (on behalf of ANZSECS) are hosting a postgraduate symposium: Eighteenth-Century Futures. This one-day, in person, symposium at the University of Sydney invites postgraduate research students working on any aspect of the long eighteenth century to come together, share their work, and think together about what the period means and what it can still offer today. This is a relaxed, genuinely low-stakes day – whether you’re presenting for the first time, keen to test the argument of a thesis chapter, or interested in sharing a paper you’ve presented elsewhere with a local audience, we’d love to hear from you.

    Registration is free, but attendees much be ANZSECS members.

    For more information, see https://anzsecs.org/call-for-papers-eighteenth-century-futures/.

  • Gale-ANZSECS Fellowships

    In conjunction with Gale, ANZSECS is excited to announce three non-residential Digital Humanities fellowships for postgrads and ECRs. The Gale-ANZSECS Fellowships will support research or teaching projects that rely on Eighteenth-Century Collections Online and use digital humanities methodologies. Awarded fellows will be given free access to the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, a selection of relevant Gale archives for the duration of the fellowship, a stipend to the value of US$2500, and an allowance of US$750 to assist with travel to ISECS 2027 (in Spain).

    Applications close Friday 2nd October 2026, 11:59 pm (AEST). Applicants must be ANZSECS members to be eligible.

    For more information, see https://anzsecs.org/gale-anzsecs-fellowship-2026-27/.

Editors

This newsletter is edited by ANZAMEMS Communications Officer Dr Elizabeth Burrell. Please contact the Editor with any notices to be posted in the Newsletter. ANZAMEMS reserves the right to edit the content of all notices. Unless noted, ANZAMEMS does not endorse any event, product or service advertised in this newsletter.

Submissions

We regularly post call for papers, conference announcements, job postings, prize announcements, workshops, and other listings that may be of interest to our members. All postings to the newsletter also are published on our Twitter page. Please email submissions as a word document or in plain text to the Editor.

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