Friends of History at Melbourne

Dr Beth Marsden discusses her work on the history of education at the Melbourne Orphanage, for the Society for the History of Children and Youth 'Digital Childhoods' project

Voices of the Melbourne Orphanage - Digital Childhoods How do we know what we know about institutions for children? While institutional and administrative records may be the easiest path, they rarely tell the full story of children’s experiences. In her wonderful new article ““Orphanage kids ruled”: Methodological Approaches for Histories of Edu...

Announcing a Readings and UMAC special event 🗽 The United States: Sacred and Profane with Don Watson; author of THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Join Don Watson as he traces how the central conflicts of the United States – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out through its history: a country at war with itself in the 1860s, the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.

Don will be introduced by Prof Michael Wesley; Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Culture & Engagement) of Melbourne University.

Book tickets and learn more online via readings.com.au or on our website.

https://www.readings.com.au/events/don-watson-the-united-states

🏛️ Announcing our next Making Public Histories webinar, 'Why Republics Die'! We are proud to be presenting this event as part of Rare Book Week alongside Old Treasury Building & Monash University Publishing.

Chaired by Emeritus Professor Peter McPhee, we bring together three eminent historians of very different periods in world history to consider the question of why republics fail. Threats to democratic and republican regimes in the contemporary world have caused historians to reflect on how and why they fail: are they vulnerable to authoritarian and military threats, or are they victims of their own shortcomings?

🎓 The webinar will take place on July 30 (5pm), featuring historians Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Dr Ángel Alcalde and Dr Julia Bowes - and is free and open to all!

🔗 Register now: https://www.historycouncilvic.org.au/making_public_histories_seminar_series

Join us to celebrate the launch of a new volume, edited by Tyne Daile Sumner, Nat Cutter, and Rachel Fensham:

Cultural Data: The Intimate Analytics of Digital Collections (Routledge, 2026)

The book will be launched on 26 June 2026 at 4pm in the Clyde Hotel in Carlton, by Distinguished Professor Lisa Given, Director of the Centre for Human-AI Information Environments and the Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

This volume presents a timely and original study of the meaning, uses, and impact of cultural data today. Working across critical and creative strands of inquiry, the book situates cultural data in the context of contemporary social, environmental, and political challenges such as the future of the arts and climate change.

Drawing on fields ranging from sociology and art history through to computer science and digital heritage, Cultural Data expands the possibilities for the study of arts and culture using computational methods at a critical moment for both national and global discussions about the future of digitisation and cultural data. Combining computer-assisted quantitative research with and qualitative and theoretical approaches, this book examines historical trends, demographic politics, and data cultures alongside experimental data visualisations that build distinctive narratives for the arts and creative industries. Through using and manipulating the open-source interoperability of arts and cultural data, the book presents new approaches, both theoretical and empirical, for telling stories about individual artistic careers, events, organisations, and networks. It also explores the unspoken, often hidden or obscured, content of cultural data: its murky histories, gaps, inconsistencies, silences, and bias.

This volume will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners in fields including cultural heritage studies, creative and performing arts, archival science, cultural policy, gender studies, art history, and cultural theory. It will also be of interest to the growing community of digital humanities laboratories and centres around the globe who operate at the intersection of humanities research, data science, and creative practice.

https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Data-The-Intimate-Analytics-of-Digital-Collections/Sumner-Cutter-Fensham/p/book/9781032492933

Coming up on the evening of Thursday 25 June

Book Launch: William Ah Ket - His Life and Times To be launched by The Honourable Chief Justice Debra Mortimer, Federal Court of Australia