JCPML Visiting Scholars
The JCPML endeavours to appoint one Visiting Scholar each year. Generally, Scholars spend some time at the JCPML, making use of the research collection.
Scholars may present the results of their research via public lectures, print publications such as books and journal articles, web publications or other means.
2012 Dr Bobbie Oliver
Dr Bobbie Oliver is Associate Professor of History at Curtin University. As Visiting Scholar, she will research the life of Elsie Curtin and present a public lecture on this theme in the last quarter of 2012. Dr Oliver will also write the text for a more comprehensive online biography of Elsie Curtin which the JCPML will publish as a web resource.
2011 Mr Graham Freudenberg
Graham Freudenberg is a journalist, author, and political speechwriter to a succession of Labor leaders, including Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran, and Bob Hawke. His research explored issues relating to the reality or otherwise of the threat of invasion to Australia in early 1942 and examined the lessons they hold for us today. Mr Freudenberg presented the results of his work in a public lecture on 27 October 2011 Curtin's Battle for Australia: Lessons for 2011.
2010 Mr Ingle Knight
Ingle Knight has written more than 30 plays, musicals and films. His one man show, The Getaway Bus, won the best drama award in the WA fringe, toured to the Edinburgh Festival and nationwide in 2003, and was nominated for a 'Greenroom' award for best performance in the Melbourne fringe. He won the 1999 Premiers Book Award, for his adaptation of Elizabeth Jolley's novel Milk and Honey. Mr Knight has also performed in over 50 professional theatre productions including his most recent roles as Waffles in Uncle Vanya and Frank in Educating Rita (Black Swan Theatre Company). He has lectured script writing at a number of universities including Murdoch University. Mr Knight co-scripted, with George Blazevic, the Shadow of the Eagle which had its world premiere in Perth in 2003 and explored the relationship between Prime Minister John Curtin and General Douglas MacArthur.
As 2010 Visiting Scholar, Mr Knight researched the influences on John Curtin in the period leading up to his re-election as federal MP for Fremantle in 1934 to write the script of a play focussing on Curtin in these 'lost years'. The play 'Curtin Rising' will premiere in Fremantle as part of Deckchair Theatre's 2012 season.
2009 Mr Bob Wurth
Bob Wurth is a Queensland author with a long time interest in the Asia-Pacific region. Following a career as a journalist, foreign correspondent and ABC Manager for Asia and ABC Radio and Television for Queensland, he took up full time writing in 1999. He has written two books with a focus on John Curtin and the years of the Second World War: Saving Australia, Curtin's secret peace with Japan, Lothian Books, 2006; and 1942, Australia's greatest peril, Pan Macmillan, 2008. Bob Wurth donated his papers relating to his research for his book Saving Australia to the JCPML in early 2008. The publication arising from his Visiting Scholarship built on his existing Curtin research, which developed particular aspects in a form suitable for a web resource with a focus on the Australia-Japan relationship before, during and after the Second World War, in the context of the strong and continuing friendship of the Curtin-Kawai families in these periods. On 19 November 2009 Mr Wurth launched the web publication and travelling exhibition based on his research, Menzies, Fadden, Curtin and the Japanese Envoy.
2008 Dr Steven Casey
Dr Steven Casey is a Senior Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His primary research interests lie in US foreign policy since 1933, looking particularly at the interaction between domestic public opinion and foreign-policymaking. Dr Casey has published two books with Oxford University Press: Cautious Crusade: FDR, Public Opinion and the War against Germany (2001) and Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 1950-1953 (2008). He is the co-editor of Mental Maps in the Era of Two World Wars (Palgrave, 2008) and has also published numerous articles on the 1940s and 1950s. In 2004-5 Dr Casey was the recipient of the Truman Presidential Library Scholar's Award and in 2010 he won the prestigious Harry S Truman Book Award for Selling the Korean War.
In May 2008 Dr Casey presented a public lecture for the JCPML A missed opportunity: the Curtin-Roosevelt meetings and Australian-American relations. He expanded upon the subject matter of his lecture in the web resource The Prime Minister and the President: John Curtin and Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II, launched in April 2010.
2007 Dr Michael Fullilove
As Program Director for Global Issues at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Dr Michael Fullilove writes on subjects including US and Australian foreign policy, the US-China-Australia strategic triangle, the UN and diasporas. Previously he worked as a lawyer, a volunteer in the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, and an adviser to Prime Minister Paul Keating. He was a consultant to Frank Lowy on the establishment of the Lowy Institute. He has published widely in broadsheets including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Times Literary Supplement, The National Interest and Foreign Affairs and he is a regular commentator for the ABC and CNN. Dr Fullilove's first book, 'Men and Women of Australia!' Our Greatest Modern Speeches, was published by Vintage in 2005. On 9 August 2007 Dr Fullilove presented a public lecture Still looking to America: Labor and the US alliance.
2006 Professor David Horner
Professor Horner served for 25 years in the Australian Regular Army, seeing active service in South Vietnam. More recently he has been Editor of the Army History Series, Head of the Australian Army's Land Warfare Studies Centre and media advisor. His research interests include Australian defence history, particularly strategy, command, intelligence and operations, and current defence issues. His major research project is the Official History of Australian Peacekeeping and Post-Cold War Operations. On 5 October 2006, Professor Horner presented a public lecture John Curtin as war leader and Defence Minister.
2005 Dr Michael McKernan
Dr McKernon has been at various times a successful academic, historian, museum manager, speechwriter, consultant and writer. In 1990 Dr McKernon was appointed historical consultant for the veterans' return to Gallipoli to mark the 75 th anniversary of the landing; in 1993 he had key responsibility for the planning and implementation of the Entombment of the Unknown Australia Soldier; and in 1994-95 he was involved as Historical Adviser to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs in the national 'Australia Remembers 1994-1995' program. He has been the inaugural Frederick Watson Fellow at the National Archives of Australia (2000) and an inaugural Creative Fellow at the State Library of Victoria (2003). Dr Mckernanis also a regular broadcaster, book reviewer and public speaker. On 20 October 2005, he presented a public lecture John Curtin: A war casualty if ever there was one.
2004 Dr James Curran
As 2004 Visiting Scholar, Dr Curran presented a public lecture A crisis of national meaning: Prime ministers and the dilemma of Australian nationalism.
Dr Curran is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and the US Studies Centre at Sydney University. His doctoral thesis on prime ministerial rhetoric and Australian nationalism from 1972 to 1996 was published by Melbourne University Publishing under the title Power of speech: Australian prime ministers defining the national image in 2004. The book was shortlisted for the 2005 NSW Premier's History Awards - Australian History Prize, and also for the Victorian Premier's 2004 Literary Award for a First Book in History. He is also the co-author, with Stuart Ward, of The unknown nation: Australia after empire (2010).
The national book launch by Stephen Smith, MP, Minister for Defence, of Dr Curran's 2010 work Curtin's empire took place at the JCPML on 5 May 2010.
2003 Professor Marilyn Lake
Professor Marilyn Lake holds a Personal Chair in the History Department of La Trobe University where she teaches Australian history and women's studies. Her current research and writing focus is on an historical investigation of the idea of the white man's country and the emergence of the 'white man' as a mode of identification and includes research into the racialised identities of Australia's Federal fathers and the complexity of 'white Australia'. Marilyn's research into John Curtin as an interesting case study of the tensions between socialist internationalism and the commitment to white Australia formed the basis of her 2003 public lecture John Curtin: Internationalist.
2002 Mr Denis Fitzgerald
Mr Denis Fitzgerald worked closely with the JCPML on a donation of papers of his father, Tom Fitzgerald, respected economic journalist and well known authority on Curtin. Denis made a significant contribution to the JCPML's understanding and arrangement of this donation and the collaboration culminated in November 2003 in the web publication Investigating John Curtin: the research papers of Tom Fitzgerald
2001 Professor Peter Edwards
Professor Peter Edward's focus on John Curtin and the Australian-American alliance formed the focus for his 2001 public lecture From Curtin to Beazley: Labor leaders and the American alliance. As 2001 Visiting Scholar, Professor Edwards was editor of a special July 2001 edition of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, sponsored by the JCPML, to mark the anniversary of the Australian - New Zealand - United States (ANZUS) Security Treaty.
2000 Dr John Edwards
Dr John Edward's research interest includes Curtin's contributions to Australia's economic and social policy. In 2001 Dr Edwards presented a public lecture In Search of John Curtin and, expanding on the themes of the lecture, his book Curtin's Gift: Reinterpreting Australia's greatest prime minister was published by Allen & Unwin in March 2005. In Curtin's Gift, Dr Edwards offers a reinterpretation of the leader and the man and challenges the perceived wisdom that Curtin was an accidental hero and a reluctant prime minister. It presents Curtin as an adept politician and argues that not only did he refocus Australia's defence and strategic alliances, but more importantly he paved the way for the internationalist economic policies of the Hawke and Keating Governments.
1999 Assoc Prof David Black
Professor David Black's research culminated in the publication of 'Friendship is a sheltering tree': John Curtin's letters 1907 to 1945. Published by the JCPML in 2001, the book provides an intimate portrait of Curtin the man, through correspondence with family, friends, colleagues and political allies, as compiled and interpreted by Professor Black.
1998 Dr David Day
Dr David Day's research for the biographical work John Curtin, a life brought him to the JCPML as Visiting Scholar for 1998. He presented a public lecture Gallipoli, Embezzlement and a Death in the Bush: John Curtin's First War and his book, which examined Curtin's life from his earliest days in Creswick to his tragic death in the Lodge, was published by HarperCollins in 1999.
1997 Dr Geoffrey Serle
As inaugural Visiting Scholar, Dr Geoffrey Serle presented a public lecture Glimpses of John Curtin and authored the book For Australia and Labor: Prime Minister John Curtin. This book, published by the JCPML in 1998, provides a glimpse into the life and times of Australia's wartime prime minister and features photographs drawn from the JCPML's collection.
