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Your meticulously researched book, Cultivating Community, examines water management in the Murray–Darling Basin. As a researcher from Ottawa, what piqued your interest in a river system so far away from home?

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Amanda: Before writing the book, I spent two years as a policy analyst with the Department of Agriculture in Ottawa, Canada, working primarily on World Trade Organization files. This experience showed me how high-level government decisions—especially trade policies—affect farmers globally. Decisions made at the federal and international levels often leave farmers with little say in matters that directly impact their livelihoods. My dissertation supervisor, Dr Peter Andrée, who had done research in Australia, told me about the political controversy that plagued the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) since the Millennium drought. I was struck by how deeply the drought had affected the region and how government decisions played such a critical role in its management. It seemed an ideal case study for understanding the relationship dynamics between environmental policy and farming communities.

Initially, my focus was on the intersection of agricultural and environmental policy, but my research led me to develop a strong interest in water policy. What started as an inquiry into the politics surrounding the drought grew into a broader exploration of the river system’s history. I found that many environmental decisions affecting the Basin were shaped by long-standing assumptions embedded in language and culture. This discovery pushed me to examine how these deeper historical and cultural forces influence modern-day water management.

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Cultivating Community draws on extensive field research among local farmers and Murray–Darling Basin Authority officials. What do you see as some of the major hurdles for positive collaboration between farmers and government officials?

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Amanda: One of the biggest challenges to collaboration between farmers and government officials is the fundamental difference in how each group perceives the world around them. These two groups operate within distinct cognitive paradigms—shaped by their lived experiences, values and professional demands. Farmers, grounded in the day-to-day realities of agriculture, focus on maximising yields, ensuring economic viability, and responding to environmental challenges as they arise. In contrast, government officials often approach water management from a policy-centric perspective, prioritising broader sustainability goals and regulatory compliance. This disconnect creates tensions, particularly when farmers perceive government policies like buybacks as decisions made without understanding the needs of the farming community. Issues related to over-allocation and salinity only compound these challenges, reinforcing the perception that government interventions are out of touch with local realities.

Trust, or the lack thereof, further complicates collaboration. Farmers can view officials as disconnected bureaucrats imposing regulations that seem overly complex or irrelevant to farmers’ concerns. Conversely, government officials may see farmers as resistant to change, particularly regarding environmental protections. This lack of mutual understanding is intensified by poor communication. Policy language can be complex for farmers to translate into practical action, and farmers’ concerns are often expressed in ways that don’t resonate with policymakers. Moreover, issues like drought, flooding, and economic hardship deepen this divide, as farmers struggle with regulations that feel disconnected from their lived experiences and the economic fragility of regional communities. To bridge this gap, both groups must build trust and craft solutions that address local realities, including community-led initiatives, infrastructure investment, and context-specific water management strategies.

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What was your experience like working in regional Australian communities?

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Amanda: Working in regional Australian communities was both rewarding and challenging. It is impossible to think about my time there without recalling the land and animals. The landscapes were striking, and the variety of bird species in central New South Wales (NSW) was extraordinary. I spotted fairy-wrens, kookaburras, kites, lorikeets and even sea eagles on farms. I also had the precarious blessing of witnessing a mob of at least fifty kangaroos bound past my kids and me at full speed, not more than ten metres away.

The research was difficult due to the vast distances between farms, which limited me to one interview per day. The year was exceptionally wet, leading to incidents like being swept off the road and having to wait for a stranger to help me out. As a solo female traveller without cell reception, these situations were particularly challenging. I also had issues running low on gas or windshield fluid (which meant bugs would obstruct my view). Despite these hurdles, the farmers were generally very welcoming and appreciated my efforts to visit them. The farmers I met were well-informed about politics and ecology, and I quickly discovered that most also shared my passion for the land and animals. Some of my experiences working in and navigating the landscape of regional NSW are shared in the book.

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In the book, you analyse five environmental discourses prevalent in the Murray–Darling Basin; could you briefly describe them here?

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Amanda: In managing the Murray–Darling Basin’s water resources, I identified five distinct environmental discourses: administrative rationalism, economic rationalism, democratic pragmatism, green environmentalism, and community centrism. These discourses represent the diverse priorities of various stakeholders involved in shaping the Basin’s water policies, ranging from farmers to government officials to local communities and environmental advocates. Each approach reflects a different worldview when it comes to balancing the complex demands on water in the region, though each has its limitations.

Administrative rationalism advocates a top-down, bureaucratic approach, with government authorities and scientific experts leading the decision-making process. This discourse emphasises regulation, centralised control, and technical expertise to ensure sustainable water use. However, its reliance on centralised decision-making often alienates local communities, leading to a lack of trust and resistance, as policies may feel disconnected from on-the-ground realities.

By contrast, economic rationalism treats water as an economic commodity, promoting market-based mechanisms such as water trading and privatisation to determine how water should be allocated. This discourse assumes that the free market is best equipped to ensure resources are distributed efficiently, with minimal government intervention. However, this approach can exacerbate inequalities, as wealthier stakeholders may buy up more water rights, leaving smaller farmers and marginalised communities with insufficient resources. It also risks undermining long-term environmental sustainability in favour of short-term profit.

Democratic pragmatism pushes for a more inclusive decision-making process, encouraging broader public participation. This discourse values the involvement of multiple stakeholders, including local communities, industries and environmental organisations, in shaping water management strategies. It stresses the importance of consensus-building and finding practical solutions that account for the diverse needs of all affected parties. While democratic pragmatism fosters inclusion, it does not always recognise how power dynamics can negatively impact the decision-making process. It tends to assume that actors have equal bargaining power, when in reality, numerous factors can affect the capacity of actors to influence policy.

Green environmentalism shifts the focus toward the ecological health of the Basin, prioritising environmental sustainability over economic or social concerns. This discourse calls for strong protections for ecosystems, advocating for policies that place the long-term health of rivers, wetlands and other natural resources above short-term human economic activities. However, green environmentalism can sometimes fail to address how social and economic injustices can often be deeply tied to environmental problems. It also conceives of humans as outside of nature, which can cause problems for the environmental movement.

Lastly, community centrism, a discourse introduced in the book, emphasises the importance of local knowledge and the unique needs of rural and Indigenous communities in the MDB. This approach advocates for bottom-up solutions that respect and integrate local experiences, fostering active community participation in water management decisions. Community centrism also champions socially fair water allocation systems that account for the specific challenges faced by marginalised groups, offering a more socially equitable approach to water governance.

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What are the advantages of a community-centred approach to environmental decision-making?

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Amanda: A community-centred approach to environmental decision-making offers several advantages, particularly when managing complex ecosystems like the MDB. First, it empowers local communities, particularly Indigenous and marginalised groups, by giving them a voice in the decision-making process. These communities often have intimate, long-standing knowledge of their local environment, which can provide valuable insights into sustainable management practices that external stakeholders might overlook. By drawing on local knowledge and traditions, this approach fosters solutions better suited to the area’s specific ecological, social and economic context.

Another advantage is that community-centred approaches promote greater social equity and justice. By prioritising the needs and values of the people most directly affected by environmental policies, decision-making processes are more inclusive, fair and transparent. It reduces the likelihood of disenfranchising local populations, particularly rural or Indigenous peoples, who might otherwise be ignored in top-down decision-making structures. Additionally, when communities are directly involved, they are more likely to support and comply with environmental regulations, creating a sense of ownership and accountability that can lead to more effective long-term management of natural resources.

Community-centred decision-making also fosters resilience and adaptability. Engaging those most familiar with the local landscape allows for more flexible and adaptive responses to environmental challenges, whether droughts, floods or other ecological shifts. Local communities can quickly mobilise to respond to immediate crises, and their continuous involvement ensures that environmental management remains dynamic and responsive to changing conditions over time.

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For readers who would like to learn more about water management and environmental ethics, what resources might you recommend?

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Amanda: For readers interested in expanding their knowledge of water management and environmental ethics, there are several works that I would recommend. A good starting point would be Vandana Shiva’s Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit (2002). In the book, Shiva critiques the privatisation of water resources, emphasising the importance of water as a fundamental human right. She explores how corporate control of water contributes to inequality and environmental degradation, and offers a critical analysis of how the commodification of natural resources impacts both marginalised communities and ecosystems.

Another valuable resource is Maude Barlow’s Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever (2013). Barlow, a globally recognised water campaigner, outlines a comprehensive blueprint for protecting the world’s water resources. Her work addresses the challenges of pollution, depletion and water privatisation, and argues for ecologically focused, community-centred solutions that empower local communities to manage their resources. This attention to community engagement and social equity makes her work especially relevant to ongoing water management debates.

For those seeking a deeper understanding of ecological knowledge and ethics, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013) offers a unique perspective. Kimmerer weaves together Indigenous wisdom and scientific understanding, advocating for a more reciprocal relationship between humans and the natural world. Her emphasis on community and traditional ecological knowledge mirrors themes found in the work of another Indigenous writer, Bruce Pascoe, in Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (2014), which looks at the rich history of agriculture in pre-colonial Australia. These works highlight the critical importance of Indigenous knowledge in environmental management.

Murray Bookchin’s work is foundational in a broader socio-ecological context. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982) was an influential text in the writing of this book. Bookchin explores the connections between ecological issues and social structures, arguing that environmental degradation is closely tied to hierarchical power systems. His call for decentralised, community-driven solutions resonates strongly with discussions on water management and the need for local empowerment in decision-making processes.

Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (1977) also provides critical insights into the ethical concerns surrounding land use and environmental stewardship. Berry critiques modern agricultural practices and argues for a return to sustainable farming rooted in strong communities. His focus on the cultural and ethical dimensions of land use provides a critical lens through which to view current environmental challenges.

As someone who loves reading literature, I find John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) eye-opening. This book offers a powerful depiction of how environmental degradation, in this case, the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, intertwines with economic inequality and human suffering. Steinbeck’s exploration of land and livelihood, though fictional, mirrors real-world concerns about the social impacts of environmental collapse. In this way, the book is a timeless masterpiece that helps explain how the events of the early twentieth century were foundational in shaping the current agricultural and environmental landscapes. ��

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Cultivating Community: How discourse shapes the philosophy, practice and policy of water management in the Murray–Darling Basin��is available now. Order your copy��here.

Congratulations on the publication of your new book, International Student Policy in Australia! You have researched social policy for a number of years – what sparked your interest in this particular area?

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Gaby: Thank you! I came to research on international students by accident. I was based at Monash University in the early part of my career in the early to mid-2000s. There was a favourable funding context, as the university had just issued a large call for project funding applications on the broad theme of ‘global movements’. Importantly, this coincided with the beginning of a new phase in my research, which was beginning to branch out from the areas I was trained in. Specifically, I was becoming excited about investigating the global dimensions of issues and categories of people that I had up to then analysed as being within nation-state and nation-‘bound’ terms. If you like, I was really finding myself as a researcher on people whose welfare could not be determined solely in the policy regime of one country. To be honest, up to then I was never attracted to researching international students, because I did not like the idea of researching human subjects who appeared before me in the classroom. It had seemed somehow too easy and not intellectually adventurous enough. But let me assure you that it is a very challenging area, if only because policy studies specialists – especially social policy researchers – are generally very sympathetic but not that interested. Though, having said that, let me emphasise their general support. Nobody is in the way. I do and have published on international students in social policy journals and settings. In fact, part of my research contribution, as I see it, is bringing public and social policy theories and perspectives to the study of international education and the lives of students.

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The book begins with an account of Scott Morrison’s press conference on 3 April 2020, in which he announced that international students would not receive any compensation for the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Do you think this overt disregard for international student welfare shocked or surprised many social policy experts? What about the students themselves?

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Gaby: In a way it did. The exclusion of international students from income compensation in 2020 occurred in a policy environment where a highly conservative government discovered the need for social policies – specifically, ‘universalist’ as opposed to ‘selective’ payment benefits – as the primary means to avoid economic recession while a pandemic was besieging Australia and the rest of the world. It was surprising also because, up to that point, like most researchers in the area, I was convinced that the economics of international education would win the day. That argument states that international students may not choose Australia in the future if they were treated so badly in 2020. In other words, governments would not want to sacrifice the future trade benefits brought about by international student revenues. Otherwise stated again, they would not want to ‘kill the golden goose’. But then, on the other hand, as I argue in the book, the international education ‘market’ for Australia has never seen extended declines in global share. It is a market characterised by ‘resilience’. In fact, the main trend is one of growth. And excluding temporary visa holders like international students from benefits in 2020 was totally consistent with the historical trajectory of national social policy. The thinking behind the Australian welfare state has always been that permanent residents and citizens can receive welfare payments and services if and when they qualify, but ‘foreigners’ never can.

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Australia has long been a popular destination for international students. How did Australia gain this reputation? And how has it changed in recent years?

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Gaby: Full-fee international education was opened up by the Hawke Labor government by the early 1990s. At that stage Australia was not expected to be a global ‘player’, but that status did emerge, as I demonstrate in Chapter 3 of the book. Australia has now long been associated with a positive and relatively accepting and liberal lifestyle and culture. It generally has favourable climatic and other conditions. It is considered safe. It has also become an increasingly competitive economy on the international stage. It is a globally recognised and respected country. Finally, and most importantly, in the last two decades, universities have increasingly relied on international student revenues as a means to fund research, which is a particularly attractive strategy in the face of what has been a lowering of the funding share coming from governments. In the process of increasing the research reputations of our universities, more international students have chosen to come to study in Australia. Our higher education system is generally seen as internationally focused and high-quality, and our universities have been climbing up the global research and quality rankings. The book explores these ‘student choice’ and ‘mobility’ factors further.

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In what ways does the government’s diminishing support for international students reflect public attitudes towards university funding?

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Gaby: As I suggest in my response to the previous question, there is a really close relationship between the research agendas of universities and the attraction of international students to Australia. Universities therefore obviously want and increasingly need international students. The Australian public, on the other hand, has become a little bit warier of universities because of their corporatisation. Indeed there is some data which suggests that universities are less respected national institutions than they once were. There are also some in the wider community who, in addition to questioning universities’ motivations as hosts for international students, also question whether we should be accepting so many international students. Let me be clear, though, that international students do not displace domestic students. Both student cohorts are being encouraged to study in larger numbers and are generally courted by governments. The current international student caps proposal is the only exception to that erstwhile rule. Finally, international students do not crowd out domestic students or other members of the community from housing, and the economic benefits of them being here far outweigh any effects they may (or may not) have on inflation and the cost of living. Any anti-international student sentiment is bad for Australia.

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What advice would you give international students who are interested in pursuing higher education in Australia?

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Gaby: The main piece of advice is please do come and study in Australia. As a lecturer I can say that international students enrich the classroom I stand in, and they do that beyond measure. As I say in the preface, it is to absolutely nobody’s benefit if international students do not come here. If they do not come, international students lose by missing out on a high-quality education and new life-experiences in a beautiful country. The domestic economy and governments miss out on the benefits of international education as an export. Educational providers at all levels miss out on the broader benefits of internationalising curricula and their campus and classroom cultures. And Australian society certainly misses out on the opportunities that come with a more global Australia. I hope we always have international students in large numbers in Australia.

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International Student Policy in Australia: The welfare dimension is available now. Order your copy��here.

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Congratulations on the publication of your new book, Photogrammetry for Archaeological Objects: A Manual. As an archaeologist, how did you come to specialise in photogrammetry modelling?

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Madeline: I actually learnt how to do photogrammetry underwater first! It’s been a really interesting journey over many years, starting as an undergraduate student at the University of լ�е��� doing a double degree in archaeology and marine science. During this, I undertook an intensive maritime archaeology course at Flinders University where, under the instruction of Dr Kōtarō Yamafune, I was first introduced to photogrammetry. As part of the course, we endeavoured to model the wreck of an early 1900s oyster cutter, the��Caprice, in Mount Dutton Bay, SA. Upon my return to studying at the University, I quickly joined one of the marine sciences labs as a volunteer under the guidance of Professor Will Figueira and Dr Gus Porter. My role involved processing thousands of images of the Great Barrier Reef to create accurate photogrammetry models for ongoing scientific assessments. With this foundation, I was then able to confidently move on to designing an honours research project modelling the Neolithic temples of Malta. This led me to further photogrammetry fieldwork in Sri Lanka with Professor Barbara Helwing, modelling first millennium BCE stupas and archaeological objects. Soon after, I was brought on as a research assistant to Professor Peter Hiscock, where I modelled hundreds of lithic artefacts from around Australia and trained students in Australia and overseas. It was through this experience that was able to hone my method of modelling small objects for archaeological analysis.��In the five years since, I have become the Discipline of Archaeology’s photogrammetry specialist and worked on a variety of projects, including creating a digital catalogue of objects for the Chau Chak Wing Museum and teaching photogrammetry to undergraduate and postgraduate students. As a result of these experiences, I decided to compile this manual for students, hoping it will assist them in their photogrammetry endeavours.

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Can you briefly describe what photogrammetry modelling is, and how it might be useful for archaeologists?

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Madeline:��Photogrammetry modelling is the process of creating digital three-dimensional models of objects, features or landscapes using well-exposed, overlapping two-dimensional photographs. All you need is a camera! By creating digital models of your research subject material, you open up new and varied ways to analyse your archaeological material. For example, you can obtain precise measurements of any areas or cross-sections of your subject, assess volume and surface area, and even strip back the texture so you can analyse the raw morphology, even of areas that are not visible to the naked eye. Photogrammetry can also be used to understand production methods, structural variations across a number of specimens, and create archival records, as digital 3D models are immune to time and degradation. You can even map landscapes and create digital elevation models that can be further used in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

For archaeologists, photogrammetry is particularly useful as it offers a non-invasive way to capture a 3D snapshot of cultural material or landscapes that can be analysed and re-analysed over and over again without damaging the subject. Models can be sent anywhere in the world and are incredibly useful educational tools, even if the original object is locked away in a museum somewhere. This helps promote public accessibility to cultural heritage – all you need is a screen!��

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Photogrammetry for Archaeological Objects: A Manual is an easy-to-follow introduction and guide to photogrammetry. Is this a resource you wish had been available when you first started 3D modelling?

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Madeline:��Absolutely! With this manual in my hands, I would have saved a huge amount of time working out the best techniques and approaches in both the shooting and processing stages of photogrammetry. It is a common assumption that photogrammetry is easy – which it can be, but only if making accurate and successful models is not a high priority! It takes time and understanding to set up your camera accurately, to position the camera and the lights, to know how many camera angles are required and how to work in an uncontrolled environment where your only light source is the sun. There is so much essential knowledge to understand before jumping in. Knowing how to process a basic model is also pretty simple; however, once you scratch the surface and delve deeper into the software, there is a lot to learn which can get confusing. Through countless hours of working with , I have discovered a variety of tools, functions and methods that really help the processing stage. Through trial and error, I tested a lot of the software’s features. This is why I wanted to write this manual, so I could share all the things I have learnt along the way and make the learning curve easier for beginners, so they don’t have to go through the stress of finding the answers to their problems by themselves – it’s all in the book!

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How might these case studies help develop an understanding of how to approach different photogrammetry projects?

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Madeline:��These case studies were specifically chosen to cover a range of different shapes, material types and colours, each presenting its own unique challenge and solution. They span from very small objects (a microlith) to shiny objects (a coin), long and thin material (bone fragment), and triangular and black stone tools. The intention here is to demonstrate examples of effective methods in both the shooting and processing stages that produce successful models. This introduces the reader to a variety of approaches and allows them to pick the best methods for their own projects. I have tried to cover the most common archaeological objects (like stone tools, bone fragments, coins and pottery) so readers can simply follow what I have outlined in the manual, however it is very likely other objects will be modelled, so this will set them on the right track! Unfortunately, in photogrammetry modelling there is no standard, one-size-fits-all approach, so introducing the readers to the range of choices not only in the shooting stage, but also in choosing equipment and in processing, will hopefully show them how to best design their own methodology.

Although this manual primarily focuses on modelling archaeological objects, I have also included three case studies on how to approach modelling excavation pits, landscape features and walled structures. It is highly likely that at some point an archaeologist photogrammetrist will encounter the need to model these in their career, so I have included them just in case!

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Madeline:��The methodology here is absolutely not exclusive to archaeologists, as anyone in the fields of zoology, palaeontology, geology, marine and medical sciences, and art and architecture (to name a few) will be able to use the techniques. Any discipline that requires high-resolution photogrammetry models for use in research, analysis or education will find this manual highly useful! This guide aims to provide a foundation for researchers to create accurate and successful models; archaeology is merely the lens through which photogrammetry is explored.��

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You have worked at a number of archaeological sites, both here in Australia and abroad. What have been some of your most memorable experiences from working at these sites?

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Madeline:��It is really difficult for me to name just one memorable moment as I have worked in some amazing places – from mustatils in Saudi Arabia to Aboriginal rock art sites in Australia. I think one of the most prominent projects that really stands out for me is modelling the oldest stone axe fragment in Australia, currently housed in the Western Australian Museum. This was an incredibly difficult object to model as it is so small, but to see and work with it was just a really humbling experience, knowing someone made it tens of thousands of years ago, and here I was taking photos of it. The other project would have to be modelling the Neolithic temples in Malta. This was the first project where I got to take the reins and navigate the modelling process. After months of research and preparation, being able to explore the temples and analyse their engineering and architecture and recreate it in digital space was really exciting. Walking through them again using a VR headset was an additional highlight! Those weeks when I was exploring the rooms and capturing every detail of the temple walls, envisioning what the temples were originally like and what they were used for, are a memory I won’t forget easily.��

I also want to add that the other experiences that I am particularly grateful for in my photogrammetry career are all the friendships I have made. Through teaching and collaborating on projects I have met some of the most inspiring and driven people, for whom I am deeply thankful. Specialising in photogrammetry has opened up many doors for me, offering new experiences and challenges each year, and I’m genuinely excited for what the future will bring.��

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Photogrammetry for Archaeological Objects: A Manual is available now. Order your copy here.

Phillip Toner is a political economist and has worked in government, universities and industry focussing on industry policy, labour markets and technical innovation. He has published in leading journals and worked extensively in consulting to entities such as the OECD, ILO and European Union. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Political Economy, University of լ�е���.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, Captured: How neoliberalism transformed the Australian state. When and how did this project begin?��

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M&P: The book came about over a few years of dialogue about the problems with political and economic debate in Australia and elsewhere. The first is the overuse of the term ‘neoliberalism’ to describe everything we don’t like about contemporary capitalism. We thought that if we want to understand the epoch we are living through, there is a need to move beyond generalisations and outrage. The book assembles leading scholars in areas of policy analysis to build critical essays on specific neoliberal public policy initiatives in Australia, how they have been implemented and sustained, and their consequences.��

The second motivation for the book is that neoliberalism is often presented mainly as an ideology – a set of ideas and general orientations that are anti-statist and�� supportive of markets and competition – but not as a practice conducted in and through the state. It was only as a state project that neoliberalism was able to implement its radical vision for a different sort of capitalism. The book’s premise is that if we want to challenge neoliberalism, we need to understand how it is actually practiced. The essays in the book move beyond neoliberalism as an idea, so we get to see how neoliberal governance occurs in Australia.��

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In Captured, you note that neoliberalism arose out of a series of ‘economic, political and social crises’ four decades ago. What were some of these crises?����

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M&P:��While neoliberalism only gained substantial political traction in Australia in the 1980s, international economic and political crises were building from the late 1960s and early 70s. There was increasing unemployment and inflation (starting with the oil price shocks in the 1970s) and falling profitability in major industrial countries. This led to political struggles about how to reform capitalism, with the neoliberal project seeking to renounce the post-war social democratic settlement, including by cutting government expenditure, restraining organised labour, and lowering taxes, particularly for the wealthiest. While the struggles were often of a general, whole-of-society nature, they also often developed particular focus, including on industrial relations, welfare, health and education reform.��

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This book presents a series of case studies from leading public policy experts. What benefits are there of using case studies to explore and analyse the effects of neoliberalism on our society?��

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M&P:��This book presents a series of case studies from leading public policy experts. The case studies permit detailed attention on specific areas of reform and the tussles which accompanied the drive to make major changes along neoliberal lines. While neoliberalism is an international project, it turns out that Australia became a test bed for some of neoliberalism’s most important policy ideas, such as user pays, income contingent loans and partial privatisation of the age pension.��

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What are some consequences of neoliberalism that might surprise some readers?��

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M&P:��We have all experienced the effects of neoliberal public policy in Australia. For instance, we know that privatised utilities jack up prices and operate with impunity from any serious regulation. We also know that the false fiscal crisis argument has been used to restrict access to basic services like education, health care and welfare, all while governments have actively redistributed income and wealth to corporations and the rich. Of course, that is not the way that these neoliberal policy changes have been presented. But as the essays in the book show, the gap between the rationales for and outcomes of neoliberal policy have become so wide that many previous advocates for neoliberal policy have become outspoken critics.��

��One of the surprising consequences of neoliberalism readers will notice is that its success is as much about denying and excluding alternatives as articulating a coherent and compelling vision of society. After more than three decades of dominating public policy, we can see how many problems and crises that we face, many of which are the direct result of neoliberal policy. But neoliberalism still has an imperialistic reach across public policy and that ability to dominate debate is a major problem to be confronted.��

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The book warns against turning to nihilism or ‘incoherent populism’ in response to the disillusionment caused by neoliberalism. What do you consider the potential outcomes of these political philosophies or world views? What alternatives might you suggest?��

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M&P:��There are a range of policy alternatives discussed in the case studies, from mild reformism to a complete rejection of neoliberalism’s main premises, particularly the primacy of individualism as the desired basis of human existence, and the blind support for corporate power it has often become.����

Both nihilism and populism feed off neoliberalism, rather than understanding and rejecting its premises. Those philosophies organise discontent in ways that channel anger and alienation mainly as a confusing and often contradictory oppositional current. There is a need to imagine how a wealthy society can re-organise how things work based on the enormous possibilities we now have in our midst.����

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For readers interested in further investigating neoliberalism’s impacts on Australia and the world, what other resources would you recommend?��

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M&P:��Some recent excellent books are: Jessica Whyte’s The Morals of the Market Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (2019); Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (2017); Mark Blyth’s Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2013); Clara Mattei’s The Capital Order. How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (2022); and Melinda Cooper’s Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (2017).��

A great current affairs site that tracks the increasing corporate capture of government in Australia is the Michael West Media site, while think tanks like the Australia Institute also produce some compelling critical analysis. Additionally, the authors we have assembled in this book have all written extensively on aspects of the neoliberal order in Australia and are well worth following.��

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Captured: How neoliberalism transformed the Australian state is available now. Order your copy��here.

Dr Lara Herring is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, UK.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, Animal Activism On and Off Screen! Tell us a bit about how this project came together?��

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C&L: Thank you. We’ve known each other for many years and had previously worked together on a couple of funded research projects. This book brought together different research areas that we had been exploring individually and together, in screen studies, vegan celebrity, and animal rights. There was one catalysing event that really sparked the idea for this project. We were both fascinated by the public and critical reception of Joaquin Phoenix’s speech at the Oscars in 2020, and his activism during the awards season that had preceded it. Phoenix won the Best Actor Award for his performance in the film Joker (2019) and used the awards ceremony as a platform to talk about animal rights. Over the last 10 years, there has also been a notable increase in the number of films and television programs that featured veganism. It was clear that there has been a real shift in how animal activism was being done and depicted. This was where the seeds of the idea for this book really began. The aim of the project was to bring together research and commentary on animal activism in film and television, with celebrity studies, an area in which there has been relatively little work done on animal rights and vegan activism. We also wanted to include voices from the activist and filmmaking community alongside those of academics and we were fortunate to be able to do exactly this.��

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Animal Activism On and Off Screen is a collection of contributions that examine the relationship between animal advocacy and the film and television industries. Contributors include scholars, activists and film industry professionals. How important is it to include a broad range of voices when exploring this topic?��

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C&L: Yes, from the outset we knew we wanted to have this range of voices in the book. It was always important to us that this book should represent not only scholarly views but that it should give space to those from the filmmaking and activist communities. This sounds as if we have categorised contributors as either scholar, activist or filmmaker and it couldn’t be further from the truth. We think it’s important to point out that many of those contributing to the book are hyphenates: filmmaker-activists; scholar-activists; activist-scholar-filmmakers. For those involved in critical animal studies, for example, their scholarship and activism are intrinsically bound together. The same is true for many of the contributors to this book and indeed, the identity of filmmaker and activist is one of the questions we explore with Liz Marshall, who is well-know to so many as the director of The Ghosts in Our Machine (2013) and Meat the Future (2020). We were incredibly fortunate to be put in touch with Liz through a mutual friend and we were delighted when she agreed to be interviewed for the book. Through Liz we were able to contact Lorena Elke Dobbie, an activist and documentary film researcher who contributed an incredible chapter to the volume that also grapples with these different facets of identity. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have worked with such an amazing and talented group of people who have all been committed to the idea of this book from the start.��

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The book is broken up into three parts that investigate: representations of activism on screen; activist texts and their reception; and celebrity vegans and animal advocates. Was this a conscious decision or an organic one?��

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C&L:��From the beginning, we knew we wanted to explore three facets of activism and the screen industries, and we wanted to make links between activism in the onscreen and offscreen spheres. At the start though, we had only the idea of the three key themes and there was no intention to split the final book up into different parts. As time went on and we began to identify and secure contributors it became clear that the book was naturally evolving in such a way that we found ourselves with chapters falling quite neatly into one section or another. We thought it would be a good idea to make the on and off-screen elements of the book clearer by using the three discrete parts and we think this works well, helping to navigate the reader through the key guiding themes.��

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Animal Activism On and Off Screen includes a number of case studies – from documentaries like Blackfish (2013) to feature films like Okja (2017). What potential do you see for activism in both fiction and non-fiction films to make meaningful change? Do you believe one genre is more effective than the other?��

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C&L:��When people think of animal activism films, they tend to think of non-fiction. So perhaps what comes to mind is undercover filmmaking which takes place in industries where animals are exploited, such as farms, slaughterhouses and laboratories, or documentaries such as Cowspiracy (2014) or Earthlings (2005) which have been able to reach larger audiences due to increased internet access and distribution platforms such as Netflix. As many of our contributors discuss, there is no doubt that non-fiction film and television has reached large audiences and, in many cases, played a part in making meaningful change. Debra Merskin and Carrie Freeman’s chapter on the ‘Blackfish effect’ is a great example of this and the authors look at what lessons can be learnt from the success of that film. We were also interested in looking at fiction genres and so there are chapters that focus on TV crime series and films such as Okja (2017) and Cloud Atlas (2012). As the book demonstrates, it’s not possible to identify one genre as being more effective than another; there is more than genre at stake. We have to take into account audience reach, marketing, promotion, timing, how the film is used, in addition to questions about narrative and aesthetic choices and what resonates with audiences. What the chapters in this book have done, is to distil all these components through case studies and analyses and offer suggestions for future activist communication strategies.����

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Do you believe celebrities have a responsibility to lend their voices and platforms to the causes they believe in?��

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C&L:There’s a long history of celebrity activism and we have certainly seen a rise in the number of celebrities who are aligning themselves with different causes and issues over the last twenty-five years. As the contributors to our book demonstrate, when it comes to the value of celebrity activism in the animal rights sphere there are many factors to take into account. Elizabeth Cherry’s research looks at the merit of celebrity association but also highlights some of the concerns about celebrity activism from the point of view of grassroots activists, particularly the impact of celebrity bad behaviour on the movement. Toby Miller argues that celebrity-fronted PETA campaigns are undermined by contradictory messaging. Eva Giraud draws on the concept of media ecologies to reveal the connected expressions of vegan politics associated with one celebrity activist, James Cromwell, and discusses how radical narratives may emerge from commercial media activity. What the chapters in the celebrity section of the book clearly demonstrates is the complexity of celebrity activism and the various ways in which it can both benefit and hinder the animal rights movement.��

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What key insights or messages do you hope readers will��take away from your book? For those who are interested to read more about animal and film history, what other publications might you suggest?��

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C&L:��We hope that readers will take away some insights that can inform tactics, approaches or strategies that can benefit animal advocacy, whether that’s in the form of academic work, creative production, or grassroots campaigns. If people are interested in reading more about animals and the media, we recommend they look at Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy (2015) edited by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole and Carrie P. Freeman; Seeing Species: Re-presentations of Animals��
in Media & Popular Culture (2018) by Debra Merskin; Animals on Television: The Cultural��Making of the Non-Human (2017) by Brett Mills; and, Animals, Anthropomorphism and Mediated Encounters (2020) by Claire Parkinson.��

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Animal Activism On and Off Screen is available now. Order your copy here.��

Fiona Morrison is an Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW լ�е���, where she has taught and supervised in the areas of postcolonial and world literatures, Australian literature and women’s writing. Her most recent book,��Christina Stead and the Matter of America��(2019), won the Walter McRae Russell Award in 2021 (ASAL). She is currently working on a book-length study of Henry Handel Richardson.

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Congratulations Fiona and Brigid on the publication of your book, Time, Tide and History: Eleanor Dark’s Fiction! What first drew you both to the work of Eleanor Dark?

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F&B:��Our first collaboration as editors was in 2016 on a special issue of Australian Literary Studies devoted to Christina Stead. Stead also features in Drusilla Modjeska’s seminal work Exiles at Home (1981) which drew attention to a group of women writers who (unlike Stead) stayed at home in Australia between the wars yet were international or cosmopolitan in their outlook. Modjeska was the first scholar to suggest that while Stead was an experimental and political writer working in the world, Eleanor Dark was an experimental and political writer working at home in լ�е��� and the Blue Mountains. While Dark and Stead are quite different writers, both adopt innovative, modernist uses of language, themes and locations and both are engaged with social and political issues of their time and place.

There is a specific լ�е��� connection that drew us into this project. Both Stead’s Seven Poor Men of լ�е��� (1934) and Dark’s Waterway (1938) present intellectually rich and strikingly memorable representations of interwar լ�е���. Both adopt distinctly modernist styles of narration. Waterway vividly conjures լ�е��� Harbour as a modern place layered by time and the past. Unfolding through a single, eventful day, Waterway follows multiple characters as they move between their village-like suburban cove and the city. Waterway stands as a kind of hinge text in Dark’s career. It continues some of the modernist techniques of Dark’s earlier fictions about interwar Australian life while pointing towards the historical trilogy that she would write next. The relation between these two phases – between modernist interwar and later historical fiction – fascinated us. We wanted to draw in colleagues to help us think about the shape of her writing and its development over time.

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Time, Tide and History features contributions from a number of scholars and experts. Tell us a bit about how this project came together.

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F&B:��With this connection to Stead in the background, and some work accomplished on Dark either through essay writing or supervision in the foreground, we had an eye out for the ways in which the field was becoming more and more interested in modernist Australian women’s writing. There seemed to be a groundswell of interest from early career scholars working on Dark, and through conferences and correspondence, we thought the time was right and the tide of scholarly interest turning in her direction. Our project started life as a one-day symposium on Dark that aimed to bring scholars and writers together. We worked on symposium plans together with our colleagues Meg Brayshaw and Melinda Cooper, both experts on Dark and interwar fiction generally. Melinda’s thesis on Dark gave rise to her excellent, multi-award-winning book, Middlebrow Modernism: Eleanor Dark’s Interwar Fiction (SUP, 2022). Meg had featured Dark’s Waterway as a focal text in her wonderful study, լ�е��� and its Waterway in Australian Literary Modernism (2021).

Our call for papers for the symposium met with a healthy response. We were just preparing to negotiate with Varuna – formerly the Blue Mountains home of Eleanor and Eric Dark, and now The National Writers’ House – as a possible venue for an event in May 2020, when the Covid19 pandemic struck. With little prospect of an in-person event, we decided to cut to the chase and begin working on an edited collection. We reached out to our initial symposium contributors, and to others in the field – early career researchers and more experienced hands – that we thought might be interested in, or already working on, Dark. The book formed around two main hubs: Dark’s interwar modernism and her mid-century and postwar historical fiction (the Timeless Land trilogy). We wanted to know more about Dark’s influence on the writing of Australian history, so we ventured to invite two eminent public historians – Tom Griffiths and Grace Karskens – into the project. They agreed, generously contributing a brilliant dialogue exploring Dark’s legacy for Australian history.

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In the book you note that Dark’s work was held in great esteem during her lifetime, yet there has long been a deficit of critical interest in her work. Why do you think that is? And what do you make of the more recent revival of this interest?

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F&B:��It’s important to note that this isn’t Eleanor Dark’s situation alone. There is much work to do in Australian literary studies on writers of significance, past and present. The gaps are partly to do with the marginalisation of literary studies in universities and public culture, which also affects Aust lit as a smaller, more highly specialised field. There are too few scholars for the work waiting to be done.

As we emphasise in our introduction, Eleanor Dark holds a firm place in Australia’s literary heritage. But critical responses to her works have fluctuated. There has been ebb and flow in the type and scale of scholarly and critical interest. If you compare the bodies of criticism on Dark to, say, Henry Handel Richardson, Patrick White, Martin Boyd and Christina Stead it is not insignificant. But neither is it full-bodied and well-tethered. A sustained and capacious engagement with her fiction is genuinely overdue.

In Dark’s case, Modjeska’s Exiles at Home was an important milestone, drawing the attention of feminist critics to the interwar fiction. Biographies appearing after Dark’s death in 1985 built this momentum further. As essays in this collection show, Dark’s interwar fiction continues to inspire innovative work by a new generation of scholars. Across the same period, however, and despite its remarkable public success and visibility, The Timeless Land and its sequels have been far less frequently examined. It was our hunch the moment had arrived to think about the historical trilogy in relation to both its own time and ours.

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A key theme in Time, Tide and History is how Eleanor Dark represents and ‘yet simultaneously erases’ Indigenous presence in Australia. Can you expand upon this briefly?

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F&B: We’d like to adjust the wording of your question a little, to shift focus from the person of the author (“Eleanor Dark”) to her fiction. But yes, we do feel that her Timeless Land trilogy represents and at the same time erases the presence of Australia’s First Peoples. Founded on Dark’s meticulous research into the colonial archive, The Timeless Land broke entirely new ground in Australian fiction and in the writing of Australian history. It was the first such work to reimagine the events of 1788 from both British invader and Indigenous perspectives. In this endeavour Dark was radically progressive. Her Timeless Land trilogy, especially volume one, cuts right across the triumphalist official narrative of settlement that prevailed at the time of her writing. Her book seized the imagination of, among others, the influential Australian historian, Manning Clark. As the dialogue between Tom Griffiths and Grace Karskens attests, although it was a work of fiction, The Timeless Land galvanised historical approaches to colonisation and helped reshape the way Australians imagined the past. ��

How then, you ask, does her writing also erase Indigenous presence? Unsurprisingly, Dark’s imagining of Indigenous culture was necessarily limited by her own lack of deeper contact or personal connection with First Nations peoples of her own time. Her novel takes certain liberties in imagining the culture of լ�е���’s First Peoples (Gadigal, Gamaragal, Bidjigal, Darug and many groups), drawing on anthropological studies of First Nations cultures that were quite distant in time, space and language from the լ�е��� people of 1788. Her narrative is also conditioned by prevailing ideas about First Peoples at the time of her writing. One of these is the idea that they belonged to a dying race. Essays in our book that examine the trilogy consider this problem from different vantage points. All recognise how Dark’s writing confronts the brutality of invasion and the injustice of dispossession yet, at the same time, identify narrative assumptions that Aboriginal people were “timeless”, unmodern and bound for extinction. Although Dark’s portraits of Indigenous characters are based on historical figures, like Wularawaray Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo, according them the humanity and dignity of inner lives, her narrative also positions them as doomed, tragic figures. Her narrative sees their culture as in many respects morally, ethically and even environmentally superior to – more noble than – that of the British invaders. Yet they are also seen as inherently unable to survive the modern world of the colonisers. Awareness of the survival and resistance of Aboriginal Australians – arising in the very same period – does not penetrate the narrative, or not apparently. Essays in our book recognise and tackle these complex contradictions. In so doing, they also engage with questions that continue to shape Australia as both society and nation today.

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In your opinion, what is Eleanor Dark’s greatest contribution to Australia literary culture?

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F&B: Eleanor Dark contributed immensely to Australian literary culture, in ways that continue into the present. Her writing and spirit are intimately connected to Varuna, in the Blue Mountains, her home with her husband Eric Payten Dark. Their far-sighted son, the late Mick Dark, gifted Varuna to Australian literary culture. It is now known as the National Writer’s House, and provides writers with a retreat, a place of beauty, inspiration and support for their efforts.

On the other hand, it’s impossible to ignore the impact of the fiction itself, not least of The Timeless Land which so challenged and reshaped settler Australians’ historical imagination. Dark’s engagement with the experience of people in the past was studious, ethical, richly imaginative and important. The richness of her approach to history has been somewhat obscured by the idea that her historical novels were destined for the mass market in some way. It is time to reorient our understanding of this work

Dark’s other abiding contribution was the creation of experimental and responsive stories about the modern Australian experience in and beyond the interwar years, especially about women. Hers was not a textbook avant-garde writing: it was grounded in profound ways in place, and in the space of her characters and their relations. At the heart of her writing is a beautiful, idiosyncratic and expansive sense of Australian landscapes, regions and scenes that were significant to her. And the fascinating layering of philosophical and political interest in her fiction makes a distinctive contribution to both national and international writing of this period.

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For readers interested in exploring Australian modernist literature, what other authors and literary works might you suggest?

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F&B: As we know from scholarship informed by new modernist studies, Australia’s response to modernism has been incorrectly labelled derivative and belated. Patrick White was, for a time, held up as the first Australian modernist writer. Dark’s body of work, however, and the interwar work of her peers, confounds any such timeline. More importantly, if literary modernism extends well beyond any single period or style, and is understood as responding to modernity’s various phases, then Australian literature is still engaged with modernism.

That said, there are some outstanding texts from the interwar period that unambiguously exemplify breakthrough modernist styles, themes and approaches. At the top of our list are some obvious, and very significant candidates: Kenneth Slessor’s poetry, and – as mentioned earlier – Christina Stead’s first novel, Seven Poor Men of լ�е���. And yet we would also recommend Henry Handel Richardson’s wonderful trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony which blends realism with a distinctly modernist sensibility. Many writers of our own time – before, during and beyond the so-called postmodernist period – engage modernism as a dynamic living legacy and as resource for their stories. Considered this way, there many books to recommend – not only the brilliant works of Patrick White, but also (to name only a few) fiction by Randolph Stow, Elizabeth Jolley, Thea Astley, Brian Castro and Gail Jones. Most recently there is Alexis Wright whose novels are not only profoundly shaped by her First Nations heritage but also Joycean in their play with language.

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Time, Tide and History: Eleanor Dark's Fiction is available now. Order your copy��here.

Myfany Turpin is an Australian Research Council fellow at the լ�е��� Conservatorium of Music, the University of լ�е���.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, Yuupurnju: A Warlpiri song cycle! Tell us a bit about how this project began.

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The project began in Lajamanu community in 2013 when Henry Jakamarra asked me to record him singing traditional songs. I was happy to do that, although I didn’t realise at first that he would sing a whole song cycle, or what kind of language documentation work we would be able to do. He came to the place where I was staying more or less every day for three weeks, and sang for between 1 and 3 hours at a time. He was already in his nineties then, but his voice is strong and clear in the recordings. He said that the songs were important, and that anyone could listen to them; he wanted to write them down and keep them safe, and give them out to places that would keep them safe for people to learn in the future. In between each verse he would often give some information about the songs and the story they accompany.

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I’ve been privileged to witness several Warlpiri ceremonies being performed, but I haven’t witnessed this specific one, because it hasn’t been performed for many years. That is one of the reasons the Warlpiri Elders wanted to document it – so that it can be re-learned. It is a traditional Jukurrpa, or Dreaming, ceremony marking male maturity, and it is also important for women. Typically in these ceremonies men sit on the ground and sing and play clapsticks or boomerangs, which are the traditional Warlpiri percussion instruments. Women dance nearby, and the singing and dancing are performed all night, until dawn. The older people know the songs, and the younger people learn them by participating in the ceremonies. These ceremonies are important because they maintain highly valued long-standing traditions.

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For this book, the Yuupurnju song cycle was sung by Warlpiri Elder Henry Cooke Anderson Jakamarra, and documented, translated and interpreted by both Warlpiri and non-Warlpiri co-authors. What was this collaboration process like?

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After the songs were recorded I asked Jerry Patrick Jangala and Steven Patrick Jampijinpa to help write down the words. Steven Dixon Japanangka heard about the process and offered to help with some parts too. We would play a verse, then Jangala and Jakamarra would repeat the words slowly so that I could hear the sounds in the words and write them. We would do this several times, with me repeating them back until the men were confident that I had represented them correctly. They would also tell me the meanings of the verses and of the words. I would write them down too, asking questions to help my understanding. We went through versions of this process several times over the years, and then checked and re-checked what we had done, to be as accurate as we could be. Musicologist Myfany Turpin undertook the rhythmic annotation, and transcribed the syllables as sung. Syllables, and in particular vowels, are often pronounced differently when sung compared to when spoken. ��For example in Song 3, yulu ‘stance, or gait’ is sung ‘�⾱������’. And when ‘u’ and ‘i' are set to a long note they are sung as ‘ay’, as in English ‘day’. This helps to provide a full picture of the musical aspects of the verses – the rhythms and the words are both important.

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Having the audio easily available is critical for Warlpiri people to learn the songs. It also helps to bring the song cycle to life when they hear the voice of Jakamarra, who many would recognise and who they would have known well, and respected as a very knowledgeable senior man. Warlpiri people are more likely to learn the song cycle by listening and singing the verses repeatedly than by reading the written words. The QR codes are an easy way to access to the songs.

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We think that the images will help people to remember the details of the songs, because they might relate to the images easily and this multi-sensory experience might help with retaining new knowledge. The images also show the relationship the songs have with things in the physical world, such as places and plants. They also make the book attractive, which we hope will draw people in to read through it completely.

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Other books in the լ�е��� Indigenous Music, Language and Performing Arts series provide valuable information from a range of perspective on Indigenous songs and music. For example ‘The Old Songs Are Always New’ about the music of Tiwi people, and the suite of books on Wangga songs from West Arnhem land. Specifically for Warlpiri, the new book Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs is a fabulous source of information. There is more and more Indigenous music available in the media, too.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, After Alexander! The title refers to the historical periods following the death of Alexander the Great. As an archaeologist, what first drew you to this era of history?

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John: Thank you. At school I studied Ancient Greek and Latin, and at university I continued with Latin as well as archaeology, ancient history and fine arts – so initially I was drawn to the world of Classical Greece and Rome. (Naturally, I still have a great interest in these areas as they form an important aspect of Seleucid and Roman culture in the Middle East.)

However, in second year archaeology, the late Dr Anthony McNicoll – one of the two co-directors of the University of լ�е��� excavations at Pella in Jordan – gave a wonderful course on ancient trade that concentrated mainly on the Seleucid (the period following Alexander in much of the Middle East) and Early Roman periods. I was hooked! As a result, I joined the Pella excavation team and, following McNicoll’s tragically early death in 1985, I took over his work in the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods there.

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After Alexander catalogues hundreds of line drawings and photographs of unearthed pottery fragments from the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods at Pella in Jordan. How important are these visual representations for bringing the written catalogue to life?

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John: There are several reasons why these visual representations are important. Perhaps the most fundamental is that for the relatively later periods, such as the post-Alexander and Early Roman eras, the pottery recovered from undisturbed strata still provides the most reliable guide to the chronology of the levels we are uncovering, as the pottery shapes change with time. This means, of course, that the strata must be excavated with care (often more difficult than one thinks), and the pottery fragments described, photographed and drawn. This careful recording allows scholars working at other sites in Jordan and elsewhere to get a more certain idea for dating their own sites.

Moreover, the type of clay and style of decoration used can often tell us where the pot was made, helping to identify the trading links that Pella had with both neighbouring and more distant towns and cities during the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods.

Additionally, the pottery fragments – especially the “fine wares” – can be individually very attractive (as seen in this book’s photographs) and certainly help to enliven a work such as this where text is such an important element.

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What can these artefacts tell us about Hellenistic and Early Roman society and culture at Pella?

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John: The artefacts we have recovered at Pella demonstrate the ebb and flow of its fortunes during these periods. During the third century BCE, historical documents suggested that the southern Levant was under the control of the Ptolemies of Egypt rather than the Seleucids. At first, we had no archaeological proof of this until our excavations uncovered pottery and coins consistent with a garrison (part of this Ptolemaic control) on the highest and most defensible part of the site.

Ancient historians suggest that the Ptolemies were defeated and that Pella fell into Seleucid hands during the second century – and this is exactly what our excavations have demonstrated, with widespread settlement across the site and a marked increase in the quality of the pottery and other artefacts.

We now also have strong archaeological evidence, with the presence of a thick destruction level containing datable pottery and coins, that Pella was destroyed in the early first century BCE by the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus, with only limited resettlement in the following Early Roman period. Ancient literature and many modern scholars had been ambivalent as to whether this destruction took place and largely silent as to the question of Early Roman settlement there. Our excavations at Pella have now confirmed both this destruction and the limited resettlement that followed.

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What kind of audience do you hope to reach with this book?

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John: I am hoping to reach an audience of both archaeologists and non-archaeologists. Until now, the post-Alexander (Hellenistic) and Early Roman periods in modern Jordan have been less studied and published than the same periods in Israel, Syria and elsewhere. This book, therefore, with both a detailed description of the excavations and the recovered pottery, along with an interpretation and discussion of these findings at Pella, will help fill a gap for scholars working on these periods in the southern Levant but needing more information about the situation in Jordan during these periods.

Furthermore, the description of the excavations at Pella and the pottery recovered from these levels are well enhanced by photographs, demonstrating to scholars and lovers of history and archaeology alike what a prosperous, fertile and beautiful site Pella in Jordan is.

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Throughout your career, you have also conducted excavations in Syria, Greece and Cyprus. What have been some of your most exciting discoveries or experiences during these excavations?

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John: I have certainly had numerous exciting finds over the period that I have worked on these excavations, including: from Pella, an extremely rare gold Roman coin which (as gold doesn’t tarnish) looked as though it was minted the day before it was found; in Greece, a beautifully painted and perfectly preserved large Hellenistic vase from Macedonia; and, in Syria, the columns, altars, and architectural members of a temple built during the rule of Alexander’s general Seleucus, along with its larger-than-life-size cult statue (perhaps Zeus) in translucent marble that was transported all the way from the island of Paros in Greece.��

These finds, and others I have not the space to mention, are obviously wonderful, but just as thrilling to me is the painstaking detective work in the ��removal of soil and other debris over a number of excavation seasons to reveal more and more of the structures – be they houses, temples, tombs or fortifications – that have been buried (along with the associated pottery, coins and other artefacts) for some two millennia or more.

Just as rewarding are the strong bonds we form with those local villagers who make up a large proportion of our excavation teams. Many of them will work alongside us for a decade or more, and as a result we get to know both them and their families very well indeed. While this is generally a source of joy, sometimes this can result in much sadness for our team members, as we often wonder what has happened to our village workers and friends over time – as in Syria, where the country has undergone wars and, more recently, devastating earthquakes.

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What other resources might you recommend for readers who wish to learn more about the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods in the Middle East and the Mediterranean?

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John: For many decades the Hellenistic period (in particular) was largely ignored by historians and archaeologists who tended to concentrate their efforts on the earlier powerful Bronze Age (second millennium BCE) or the later Roman empires in the Middle East. The conquests of Alexander the Great, of course, have always been popular with historians, and this has now led to a much greater focus, both historically and archaeologically, on the kingdoms formed after his death, such as that of the Seleucids in the Middle East or the Ptolemies in Egypt. This focus has now demonstrated that, while some areas conquered by Alexander readily adopted Greek language and customs, other regions remained relatively impervious to these new influences. Indeed, it is this piecemeal and uneven response to the imported culture of the Macedonian armies of Alexander and his generals, demonstrated by the pottery and other artefacts at Pella, that provides one of the most fascinating areas for research in the Hellenistic east. This can be seen in the now increasingly numerous books on the history and art of the Hellenistic world, including A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Erskine 2005) and Art in the Hellenistic World (Stewart 2014).

Gay Hawkins is an Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western լ�е��� University. She is a leading researcher in the fields of environmental humanities, STS and the politics of materials.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, Making Animals Public: Inside the ABC’s Natural History Archive. What inspired you to start this project?

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G&B: The initial interest came from wondering about the role of the ABC in attuning audiences to animals and how it developed a distinctly Australian form of natural history TV. While Australians now take natural history animals on their screens for granted, getting them onto television in the 1960s involved a lot of technical and cultural intervention. Once they got there, these animals rapidly became very popular with audiences and had significant impacts on them. They also developed a life of their own! We were interested in exploring both those dynamics: how animals were made informative and entertaining, and how natural history programs have shaped public interest in nature, conservation, the environment and science. Natural history television is now a huge global production industry and format. The ABC has been the key institution for developing this genre in Australia. It has played a very significant role in documenting myriad natural environments as well as many rare and elusive Australian animals – and showing these to audiences for the first time. While there have been lots of analyses of the evolution of the ABC as a major cultural force in Australia, these have focused on genres like drama, comedy and current affairs. Natural history television remained relatively unexamined.

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Making Animals Public��examines the evolution of natural history television on the ABC, through a combination of disciplines – screen studies, critical animal studies, and science and technology studies. How important was this interdisciplinary approach to your analysis of this archive?

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G&B: An interdisciplinary approach was important because the material demanded it. The book is not an institutional history; it is an exploration of what is distinct about screen animals, how they are made televisual. Hence the need to draw on media and screen studies accounts of mediation and representation. It is also a study of what natural history animals say, more broadly, about the place of animals in society and animal–human relations. How are audiences invited to look at natural history animals: as superior to humans or as companions in a complex multispecies world? Finally, we were interested in concepts from science and technology studies that foreground how science is shaped by cultural dynamics. Scientific knowledge has a huge influence in defining what is natural, what is factual and what threatens us. Natural history television is a major force in communicating science and making scientific knowledge accessible and popular.

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In the book, you state that televised animals are “enacted and staged rather than found and documented”. Can you expand on this briefly?

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G&B: In recent years, natural history television has been criticised for creating televisual “Edens”. The accusation is that these programs protect audiences from the realities of ecological crisis by showing animals in pristine environments doing remarkable things. Related to this is concern about the use of domesticated animals and an array of other production techniques in order to simulate animals in the wild. While these critiques are compelling, the claim that natural history animals aren’t really that natural after all is misplaced. It implicitly endorses the idea of an “authentic animal” and fuels concern about mediation as distorting. In the rush to critique what the media “does” to animals, we can lose sight of how natural history animals are crafted and composed in complex and myriad ways. In order for animals to be able to inhabit television, they needed to be staged and enacted rather than simply documented. Camera angles, narration, soundtracks, edits, etc. all work to craft a natural history animal that will engage viewers. The issue we explore is not how these techniques obscure the real animal but how they reveal what has come to count as a natural history animal and how this has changed over time. The ABC has made huge shifts in screening animals over the last 15 years and foregrounding human–animal interactions – from the politics of feral animal management to living with sharks. They have also explored major conservation issues such as extinctions and environmental destruction. This undermines the idea of pristine, untouched nature.

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How do you think ABC documentaries about Australia’s natural flora and fauna, from the 1950s to now, have contributed to Australian identity and environmental awareness?

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G&B: The public broadcaster has played a key role in framing the biota of the Australian continent as central to national identity, and also as unique, fragile and valuable. It has been central in building environmental awareness in audiences: this is a reflection of the institution’s charter to inform, educate and entertain a national public. This reached its apogee with the series Nature of Australia (ABC 1988) which was made for the bicentenary. During the period that our book focuses on – from the 1950s to the 2000s – we trace a growing disquiet about the trajectory of Australia’s modernization and its ecological cost. This is a trajectory in which “nature” moves from an exploited and neglected backdrop to the nation’s growth and development, to center stage as “the environment” and a matter of public interest and concern. More recently, planetary concerns have become a focus, with programs investigating climate change and its threat to all life on earth.

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What do you expect or hope for the future of natural history programs?

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G&B: There have been significant shifts in how animals and nature are explored on the ABC. The final chapter of the book explores the Your Planet series that screened in 2020. This series examined planetary forces shaping the environment. After the Fires and Big Weather: And How to Survive It, for example, investigated the impacts of climate change and showed the devastating effects of catastrophic weather events on humans and animals. This was definitely not easy viewing! The key shift in these programs was that they challenged the idea that nature would always go on, that it was resilient and would recover. In abandoning this premise, they could be described as “post-natural history” shows. Situating nature and wildlife in a planetary framework is important; it doesn’t deny the local but it gives it a bigger context. This is politically significant because it disrupts a focus on singular issues or species and foregrounds the forces that all humans and animals are facing.��

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Within the ABC’s oeuvre, what natural history programs might you recommend to readers of your book?

G&B:��

• After the Fires
• Nature of Australia: A Portrait of the Island Continent
• Back to Nature
• A Dog’s World with Tony Armstrong

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Getting started in the publishing industry can seem like a daunting feat, with many different areas and roles to choose from. There are different branches including trade, education, academic, scholarly and scientific publishing etc. ��There are also a number of divisions in publishing that are often not as visible as the roles of publisher or editor. These range from sales, marketing, production, publicity, product, digital, legal, finance and more.

լ�е��� (SUP) is a not-for-profit, scholarly publisher of research-based books that engage, inspire and stimulate debate. At SUP, we believe in the value of research, the power of knowledge and the ability of books to change the world. Our mission is to enable, support and facilitate the dissemination of outstanding research. We look to find new ways of extending the availability and accessibility of knowledge and increasing engagement with individual works.

Meet the Team

We’ve asked our team some frequently asked questions about their entry into the industry and advice for those wanting to make a start.

Susan: I’m the manager and publisher for լ�е���. I manage the business, and also commission new books for two of the SUP scholarly series.

Naomi: I’m the publishing manager and լ�е���, my main role is to steer our books through the publishing process, and liaise with our wonderful authors, copyeditors and designers.

Nathan: I’m the production officer at լ�е���. My tasks include typesetting, scheduling, ebook distribution and design.

Kelly: I’m the publishing projects officer at լ�е���. My main role is to provide marketing, sales, and distribution support to the team.

Q: Did you always want to work in Publishing?

Susan: I always wanted to work with books, but hadn’t considered working in publishing until the opportunity arose to restart SUP.

Naomi: I have always loved reading, but it wasn’t until I was about halfway through my undergraduate degree that I realised there was a whole industry devoted to making books.

Nathan: Initially I wanted to be a web designer, but I realised my skill set aligned better to traditional publishing.

Kelly: I’ve always enjoyed reading but didn’t realise there were so many different opportunities available that would allow me to work with books in some capacity.

Q: Did you study/ What did you study?

Susan: I studied a BA Library Science at Kuring-gai CAE (now UTS). It was probably close to the end for that degree, once KCAE became part of UTS the degrees changed into Information Management and Knowledge Management. I also have an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW, which helped me with the business side of running SUP.

Naomi: My undergraduate degree was in economics, and then when it dawned on me that instead of crunching numbers I could devote my days to books, I enrolled in the masters of publishing at the University of լ�е���.

Nathan: I studied a BA in Fine Arts and a Masters in Multimedia Design.

Kelly: I did��Bachelor of Business degree��at the University of Newcastle, and when I graduated I found out about the Masters of Publishing available at the University of լ�е��� and enrolled myself in the next available semester.����

Q: What are some of your previous roles and how were they applicable to working in SUP?

Susan: I would say I’ve worked at the confluence of IT, media and information management for most of my career. My first job post-uni was in the editorial library of the լ�е��� Morning Herald, where you needed to find answers to journalists’ questions really quickly. We had an in-house full text database of the SMH stories, and these needed to be checked each day to ensure that the text in the database matched what actually appeared in the print edition.

I also worked at the State Library of NSW as a reference librarian and then running one of their small businesses, ILANET, which offered network services to libraries around Australia. That was at beginning of the internet age, so we were an ISP for a while.

I came to the University of լ�е��� Library as a web developer, and I also worked as a freelance web developer for several years, including for the լ�е��� Writers Festival. Restarting SUP gave me the opportunity to bring all of my skills and experience together – running a business, checking the accuracy of text, and bringing the research to a wider audience.

Naomi: I spent almost 8 years working at a trade publisher, starting as publishing assistant and moving through the editorial department to become an editor. One of my focuses was on cookbooks and ‘image-heavy’ books, which has translated well to SUP’s archaeology series and Indigenous music, language and performing arts series, as the books we publish in these categories also require a keen attention to balancing textual information with graphs, images and tables.

Nathan: I’ve worked for Weldon Owen, Pan Macmillan, Hachette Australia, and Wolters Kluwer CCH. All gave me the skills working in production and design that I use today.

Kelly: I worked as a client services coordinator at a marketing agency before I started working at a trade publisher as a sales coordinator, and later as a marketing and publicity coordinator. I worked there for 3 years before moving to a children’s education publisher as a marketing coordinator for a time before coming to work at SUP.

Q: What do you recommend for someone trying to get into the industry?

Susan: When you’re starting out, don’t get too hung up on getting into your ideal role straight away. Many of our interns take a ‘foot-in-the-door’ role and then use that to move into editorial later, or in fact find out that they love production or sales or PR. And keep reading widely!

Naomi: Keep an eye out for opportunities outside of the editorial department: publicity, sales and marketing are creative and interesting areas to work, you don’t just have to be an editor!

Nathan: Be open to learning everything! Also, many people want to work as an Editor, but there are many good Publishing roles in Sales, Marketing, Publicity and Production that many people often overlook as a potential career.

Kelly: There are many opportunities in the industry that may not necessarily be what you have in mind, but they can serve as stepping stones into another role, or you may find that you prefer working in a different area than you had imagined. Intern or try to find an entry level role where you can. I’ve met so many publishing professionals with a wide variety of studies and experience, so definitely think about your applicable skills and how they can be used in the different areas of publishing. Read as much as you can!

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If you have more questions, check out our blog post ‘Your Publishing Questions Answered!’.

Stay up to date with SUP news by signing up to our monthly newsletter .

Paul Eggert FAHA is Professor Emeritus at Loyola University Chicago and the University of New South Wales. He is a scholarly editor, book historian and editorial theorist.

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Tell us a bit about how your interest in the poetry and life of Charles Harpur began.��

Paul Eggert (PE): I became immersed in colonial and later prose, poetry and plays when serving as general editor of the Academy Editions of Australian Literature project. This project encompassed ten fat volumes published by the University of Queensland Press from 1996 to 2007. We had hoped to include Harpur’s poetry but the problems involved in capturing and documenting it all were monumental and had to wait. As a preliminary step in 2019, we were able to encompass online the 2,700 versions of his 700 poems in the Charles Harpur Critical Archive (CHCA: charles-harpur.org). The editorial work of digesting the meanings of what has been documented (together with its seemingly endless textual variation) was required, we soon saw, before we could get on with an edition of the poetry and of the letters that we had discovered along the way. Only thus would there be a reliable biographical backbone on which to plot not just Harpur’s life in detail but his poetry and prose as it emerged and was revised, year by year, from the 1830s when he began to write until his death in 1868.��

Chris Vening (CV):�� My interest came via the CHCA and Trove. Some years back I joined the people who trawl through the pages of the newspapers digitised on the National Library’s Trove website, correcting the often-garbled machine-readable text that makes it possible to search millions of pages. I was drawn to the colonial newspaper verse – not just the greats like Harpur and Kendall, but also the oddities and eccentrics, and Trove has a wealth of them, usually hiding behind pseudonyms. I wrote papers on a couple of the more obscure ones; Paul saw these and invited me to help out with CHCA. We live a few doors apart in Canberra, so liaison was no problem day to day, though most of our work – including with Desmond Schmidt in Brisbane – was via email, which as it turned out was a boon during COVID. I started by helping with transcription of the letters and chasing biographical material, mainly at the Mitchell Library and NSW State Archives. My main interest was in Harpur’s life and the colonial cultural context, so the next step was to build the Harpur biographical timeline on CHCA, which is annotated with hundreds of live links to newspapers, manuscripts and websites like the Australian Dictionary of Biography. From there it was a short step to the much more extensive footnotes needed for The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle and the forthcoming Supplementary Letters.����������

The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle is the first collection of Harpur’s letters to be published, including correspondence from his peers. What do the letters from Harpur’s contemporaries contribute to this portrait of the poet’s life?��

PE: There has been only one biography of Harpur, by J. Normington Rawling in 1962. Much editorial and then online archival work of the last 60 years has gradually opened up his manifold contributions, both poetic and political, to colonial culture, especially of the 1830s to the 1860s. The moment to reassess the long-held celebratory view that he was the most important nature poet of the period has arrived. The letters show a much more various and intriguing figure than had been guessed, often revealed at his best in correspondence with fellow colonial poets, Henry Kendall first among them. Harpur was also a deeply committed practitioner-poet, endlessly revising his poems as they proceeded to publication in various forms in colonial newspapers (at least 900 appearances) and towards their anticipated collection in book form, one that would never come during his lifetime. The posthumously-edited collection of 1883 called Poems, which abridged and altered the texts of his poems at will to suit emerging tastes – a process captured in detail in the edition of The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle – is a fascinating indicator of how distinctive and potentially disturbing Harpur’s style and thinking actually were.��

CV: Much of the correspondence between Harpur and Kendall deals with technical verse-making, with Kendall’s labours to publish Harpur in լ�е���, and with his admiration (or otherwise) for English contemporaries like Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne. Kendall was an unqualified admirer of Harpur, describing the older man as the national poet to the rising generation and often expressing his belief in Harpur’s greatness. But in Kendall’s comments and responses we read Harpur’s own doubts and fears about his future reputation, his “keen discontent” with his isolation – personal and cultural – in the goldfields, his contempt for the newspapers and newspaper people he relied on to publish his verse, his resentment of injury by those he considered his intellectual inferiors, and the growing frustration and melancholy that would affect his last years.����

From Harpur’s widow Mary, whose letters describe her struggles to realise his ambition to publish his verse, we glimpse the poet’s anger and frustration at the marring of his work by careless printers (“I have so often seen poor Chas stamping mad at such calamities”) and, even worse, with those like newspaper editor W.A. Duncan who dared interfere with a Harpur poem – a fate which, ironically, would befall his own posthumous Poems of 1883. From Mary, too, we get hints of Harpur’s hopes of lasting recognition (he “knew not all and expected too much”), as well as his private opinion (never articulated in his own letters) that Kendall was not the “great poet” he would come to be considered in Kendall’s own lifetime. Henry Parkes reveals his doubts about Harpur’s character earlier in their friendship than we might expect; Joseph Jehoshaphat Harpur, despite their estrangement, emphasises his brother’s generous disposition (his “faults were faults of temper”); while Harpur’s daughter Mary Araluen defends her father from the charge of intemperance, and describes his long-lasting admiration and affection for his wife.��

In the book, you describe Harpur as “witheringly satirical” and “always witty”. Are there any particular poems or letter excerpts that, to your mind, best embody these traits?��

PE: “The ‘Nevers’ of Poetry” is the outstanding example, one of many poems. It grew and grew as the years went by and as Harpur settled scores with his political and other opponents. Newspaper poetry was the principal vehicle for poetry in the colonial period when local book publication had otherwise to be paid for in advance. Such poems sat cheek-by-jowl with news reports on the very figures Harpur was attacking. Readers held poetry in high cultural esteem, so this phenomenon gave poetry a special edge and advantage. Harpur could wield the knife of satire to great effect even though most readers today think of him on the basis of his anthology appearances as solely a nature poet.��

CV: The editor of the posthumous Poems deliberately avoided Harpur’s satirical and comedic material – whether from the loss of topicality or the risk of offending the still-powerful is not clear. For this we go to manuscripts and newspapers. “The Temple of Infamy” (whose designated ID in the CHCA is�� h580c) was Harpur’s Dunciad, “the first step”, he called it, “in an attempt to expose, and root up if possible, the ‘thousand and one’ Infamies that are everywhere depraving the morals and debasing the intellects of the rising generation of this Colonial Public.” His anonymous “Squatter Songs” in Duncan’s newspaper are full of indignation beneath the ironic humour – for example “The Beautiful Squatter” (h560a). His diatribes against W.C. Wentworth in verse (like h713c) and prose; his letters of outraged indignation against critics like Hastings Elwin (Letters 10 and 11 in The Letters of Charles Harpur and his Circle); his bitter recriminations against editor Samuel Bennett (Letter 126) who had brushed aside Harpur’s offer to contribute articles, all gave play to his sardonic wit, whether impelled by rage or humour or both. As an example, read this passage from Letter 37 to The Empire of 1853, blasting the nominee NSW Legislative Council and proposing various tests Governor FitzRoy might apply in selecting his nominees to it:��

But the final test … is a much mightier thing, I can tell you, than it looks to be, and is by no means to be sneezed at. In short, it is a thumping great nose! a round, robustious, broad-backed, elephantine, Wellingtonian, dodolike upper mandible! Be this your test, Sir Charles. Pack our Nominee Chamber with noses of such amplitude, and consequently of such a roaring sternutational power, that one-and-twenty of them, well provided with �ʰ����Գ���’s mixture, might even discharge (if need were) on the anniversary of a coronation, or what not, a very satisfactory and right royal salute, to the public saving of much excellent gunpowder. Yes, Sir Charles, stick to this nose test. It will not only give us the shadow, but something of the substance, such as it is, of a genuine House of Lords. For a nose of the size and fashion here meant, when surmounted with a forehead so far recedent as to be incapable of the corrective of deep thinking, is indicative of intense sensualism, selfishness extreme, and a brute obstinacy; and constitutes (thus surmounted) the upper facial type of the great mass of the British aristocracy. And if it be right for us to copy this same aristocracy in its legislative functions, it can hardly be wrong, even for the look of the thing, to copy it also as far as we can in this, the most marked, of its featural idiosyncracies.��

What insights into 19th century Australian society and literature have you gleaned from Harpur’s letters and/or poetry?��

PE: Our work on the letters gave colonial culture a density and presence neither of us had experienced in quite this way before. Its idealism, especially of the 1840s and early 1850s, comes fully into focus in The Letters edition as the forms that representative government would take were battled out in the public arena. The idealism needs further study as it acts as a counterweight to accounts that stress the (undeniable) violence towards Aboriginal peoples on the shifting colonial frontier. How did idealists such as Harpur ride the seeming contradiction? The Letters edition makes its contribution to that urgently needed debate.����

The other principal insight for me was recognising the contemporaneity of colonial culture, its surprising up-to-dateness with what was happening in the literary world centred in London. Focussing on the letters of a single poet and those of his circle has brought alive, by forcing us to understand, the relevant facts of book history that allowed this to happen.����

Harpur was the son of two former convicts who went on to become pillars of their local community. How did his family background inform his writing and political views?��

PE: Harpur grew up in a family where his ex-convict father was also the local school teacher at Windsor, NSW, where his brother would also become a poet, even if only a minor one, and where Harpur himself seems to have had access to some good private library, perhaps that of the Reverend Samuel Marsden. Cheap reprinted literature was also readily available in the colony, and Harpur took full advantage of it, even though a poor man for most of his life. Of Emancipist (ex-convict) stock, Harpur was the natural enemy of the Exclusivists who separated themselves from those with the convict taint. Harpur took particular delight in skewering the pretensions of the large landholding squatters as well as his political opponents, especially in the 1850s.����

CV: Harpur was indeed a “natural enemy of the Exclusivists”, and delighted in skewering the pretensions of the great squatter landholders and politicians. That said, his convict connections don’t figure prominently in his verse or letters. He opposed the re-introduction of transportation, but so did most other progressives of the day. His obituary lines for his emancipist father (h297c) make only brief and discreet reference (“I stand in thought beside my Father’s Grave: / The grave of one who, in his old age, died / Too late, perhaps, since he endured so much / Of corporal anguish, sweating bloody sweat…”); and even his play The Bushrangers makes very slight reference to convict origins of the protagonists. Harpur’s consciousness of a convict heritage was overlaid by a passionate belief in the destiny of his generation of Australians to create a new society – egalitarian, democratic – out of the stuff of the old, and this informed his radicalism of the 1840s–1850s.��

What other resources would you recommend for readers interested in learning more about early colonial literary culture in Australia?��

Online resources:��

The Charles Harpur Critical Archive. ed. Paul Eggert (լ�е���: լ�е���, 2019): online archival resource at charles-harpur.org��

AustLit database: online bibliographical resource at austlit.edu.au��

Trove: online colonial-era newspapers in facsimile and transcription: trove.nla.gov.au��

J. Normington-Rawling. Charles Harpur: An Australian (լ�е���: Angus and Robertson, 1962) (the only biography of Harpur).��

Literary-historical works:��

Jennifer Alison, Doing Something for Australia: George Robertson and the Early Years of Angus & Robertson, Publishers 1888–1900 (Melbourne: BSANZ, 2009)����

Katherine Bode, Reading by Numbers: Recalibrating the Literary Field (London: Anthem, 2012)����

The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel, ed. David Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)��

The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry, ed. Philip Mead and Ann Vickery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024��

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Q: I've been invited onto a book writing team for 2024. What do I need to know about working with such a team?��

How exciting! You may wish to ask your editor if the publisher has a House Style Guide, so that you can prepare your manuscript according to their preferred referencing and editorial style. There may also be key points in time when you are asked to review edits, sign off on your work and promote the book, so you should ask your editor if they know the dates that they would like you to be available. We hope you have a smooth and enjoyable experience with your team.��

Q: What is the process of submitting your work into a publisher? Are there certain requirements?��

Each publisher has different requirements for accepting a submission. At SUP we look for quality proposals for monographs, multi-authored or edited collections and research-based books for the general reader in subject areas that are covered by the SUP series. The steps for submitting a proposal to SUP are listed on the “Authors Page” of the լ�е��� University press website.����

Most publishers will want a detailed synopsis of the book. For a single-authored book, this should include an overview of the arguments or ideas, how they flow through the chapters, and the conclusions drawn. For multi-authored books, cohesion between the chapters is important, as well as strong recommendations for action.����

Q: How do you get a job reading/editing the submissions?��

We have internal editors who read and edit the acquired submissions. We also outsource some submissions to external freelancers depending on our workload, expertise, and budget. If you have editing experience, and would like to be entered into our database, please send an email and a copy of your resume through to sup.info@sydney.edu.au����

Q: How long does it take to publish a book, from pitch to print?��

The pitching, discussion and acquisition stage can take an unlimited amount of time, depending on the publisher. Once the manuscript has been submitted, the book will go through the publishing process which is a minimum of 9 months and can be as long as 12 or 18 months depending on the peer review process and subsequent work required, and the publishing schedule for the period.��

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Have any more questions for us? Email them to��sup.info@sydney.edu.au

See the original post .��

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Congratulations on the recent publication of your book, Archaeology and History of the Chinese in Southern New Zealand During the Nineteenth Century. This book revisits your 1986 PhD dissertation, how did this study begin?

In 1977 I was appointed project archaeologist on the Clutha Valley Development, a plan to build five hydroelectric dams in Central Otago in the South Island (Te Wai Pounamu) of New Zealand. My job was to record and carry out a program of mitigation excavations on the sites that would eventually go underwater or be destroyed by other construction work. It soon became apparent that about 60% of the sites that would be destroyed were associated with the Chinese miners who came to Otago after 1866. With their distinctive Chinese artefacts, these sites were readily recognisable. As there had been no prior archaeological research on Chinese sites, I decided to make them the focus of the project. In the process I accumulated so much artefactual material and data I decided to write it up and submit it as a PhD.

Much work has been done on the goldmining regions of the US and Australia, would you say that comparatively little research has focused on these regions in New Zealand, and particularly the experience of those of Chinese background? Why is that?��

Much greater numbers of Chinese miners went to the US and Australian goldfields (as well as Chinese railroad builders going to the US) than came to NZ. Chinese settlers were also late arrivals – initially only coming in small numbers from Victoria, Australia, after they were invited by the Otago Chamber of Commerce in 1866.�� Consequently, there are far more Chinese sites over vastly greater distances in the US and Australia. Before I started my archaeological research on the Chinese miners in Central Otago, there had been a lot of historical research on Chinese migrants in all three countries but there had been relatively little archaeological research. As soon as I started publishing papers after the Cromwell Chinese Camp excavation in 1981, I started receiving letters (no emails initially) seeking information from my digs and invites to overseas conferences. It just snowballed from there. After my thesis became available in 1986, it became an important international reference for information on overseas Chinese material culture, in no small part because of the high-quality artefact drawings.

What sparked your interest in historical archaeology? ��

When I was a young student in the early 1970s, the focus of archaeology in our teaching universities (Otago and Auckland) was on Māori and Pacific archaeology. In the 1980s, myself and other archaeologists with an interest in the colonial era started getting into historical archaeology – especially the New Zealand Wars-era and mining archaeology – while others got into urban- and missionary-era archaeology. Another factor was growing up in Dunedin in the South Island, only a few hours drive from the Otago goldfields. I loved to explore the goldfields and it is a passion that has stuck with me. The same with archaeology – my career was a paid hobby.

Your dissertation is considered by the Australian Society for Historical Archaeology to be a seminal work in the field of historical archaeology. Might you have some advice you’d like to pass on to the next generation of archaeologists?

If it’s a seminal work, it’s because I had nine years to do extensive fieldwork and accumulate a huge amount of material for comparative analysis. Few receive such an opportunity, but archaeology is all about pattern recognition. Every investigation of sites anywhere touched by the Chinese diaspora will produce artefacts and data that can be compared and contrasted against the findings and conclusions expounded in Archaeology and History of the Chinese in Southern New Zealand During the Nineteenth Century to expand knowledge about the lifeways of Chinese migrants across distant lands.

What are you currently working on?

Since I retired at the end of 2018, I have mainly been writing books and doing some archaeological contract work, and spent two years in Taiwan. I am currently working on two contract jobs: an archaeological impact assessment for the Pauanui Tairua cycleway and a Heritage Assessment and Maintenance Plan for sites in the Waiorongomai goldfield (unfortunately Chinese miners did not work on the North Island goldfields).

If you could go back in time, when and where would you go?

I wouldn’t want to go anywhere back in time if I couldn’t come back, but I think an interesting and topical time would be to go back to the heyday of the goldrushes in NZ.

Archaeology and History of the Chinese in Southern New Zealand During the Nineteenth Century��is available now. Order your copy��here.

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Jingdong Yuan is Associate Professor at the Centre for International Security Studies, University of լ�е���, and an Associate Senior Fellow at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Dr Yuan’s research focuses on Indo–Pacific security, Chinese foreign policy, Sino–Indian relations, China-EU relations, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. He has held a number of prestigious visiting appointments in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Engaging China explores the unique relationship between Australia and China, and how it has changed in recent decades. What would you describe as some of the distinguishing features of this relationship?

Australia’s relationship with China is distinguished by the importance of Australia’s economic ties with China, the diversity and depth of the Chinese-Australian community within Australia, and the challenges that US-China tensions pose for Australia’s China ties. Over the past five decades, Australian policymakers from both major parties have navigated these challenges by relying upon an "engagement" strategy with China. As we explain in our introductory chapter, Australia’s engagement of China has facilitated a deepening economic relationship alongside expanded cultural, educational and people-to-people exchanges, fostering greater understanding between the two countries and populations. By maintaining a pragmatic approach to navigating and managing bilateral differences, Canberra’s engagement strategy has yielded numerous benefits for Australia and Australians. Yet, as the strategic rivalry between the United States and China rapidly deepens, growing distrust and fears of China are once again shaping Australian media coverage and public discourse, with potent implications for Australia’s China policy. This book explores these dynamics and explains how returning to a robust engagement strategy best serves the interests of Australia and Australians.

Tell us a bit about how this project began.��

We first conceived of this project back in September 2021, when the outlook for Australia’s diplomatic relations with China looked grim. Seeking to follow on our 2012 co-edited volume, Australia and China at 40, we wanted to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties by producing a collaborative book bringing together a diverse group of leading China experts across various issue areas. We began by seeking out լ�е���-based scholars, diplomats, and journalists who shared both our concerns over the surge of fear and misinformation that has undermined thoughtful public deliberations over Australia’s complex relationship with China and our vision for how we could collectively contribute to a more stable, productive, and successful relationship with China. Personally, we felt inspired by Gough Whitlam’s bold China visit of July 1971, and so designed this project and the resulting book around our hopes of recapturing Whitlam’s vision and courage in calling for Australians, as Ambassador FitzGerald points out in his chapter, to "open their minds" and to renew their confidence in a robust engagement strategy.

The book is divided into three parts: foreign and security relations; the economy; and media, education and culture. As editors, how important was it for you to present such a well-rounded view of Australia–China relations?

Australia’s rich and diverse relations with China extend far beyond the political and economic interactions that tend to dominate news headlines. We designed this book to include a broad range of issues and perspectives that we felt were often marginalised in the mainstream media. Australia–China relations are far more than simply fear and greed. The two countries share a long and proud history of social interactions, with Chinese immigrants having made countless contributions to Australia’s local communities, schools, universities, culture, and society. In addition to restoring to a more balanced approach in diplomacy and resuming more nuanced and effective economic policies, adopting a more nuanced approach to reporting on China, openly tackling financial and cultural challenges within the higher education sector, and reinvesting in cultural diplomacy are all measures that can contribute to restoring a more stable foundation for Australia’s engagement with China. Overall, the diverse and thoughtful contributions to this volume offer a clarion call for policymakers to push back against an atmosphere of fear and misunderstanding, and to instead offer calm, confident leadership to restore a more stable and productive relationship with China.

What do you think is the greatest challenge that the relationship between Australia and China currently faces?

We believe that there are two crucial challenges for Australian policymakers, which we highlight in our introductory chapter and throughout this book. First, Australian policymakers need to reconsider how to “right-size” the role of the United States within the Australia–China relationship. While Australia’s relationship with the United States is certainly important, the rapidly escalating tensions between the US and China have had numerous negative effects upon Australia’s own diverse and complex relationship with China. The contributors to this volume demonstrate these negative effects across a range of core issue areas and offer a number of practical suggestions for policymakers to consider.�� Secondly, Australian policymakers and the broader public need to explore how we can restore a bipartisan, socially embedded consensus in support of a robust engagement strategy. Reaching the 50th anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties offers an opportunity for all of us who are involved in the Australia–China relationship to explain more clearly and persuasively why we believe an engagement strategy best serves the interests of Australia and Australians. This book represents our collective contribution to this crucial endeavour.

For readers interested in learning more about China and about the special relationship between our two countries, what other resources might you recommend?

Some of the more important recent books on the Australia–China relationship include David Brophy’s 2021 book, The China Panic (La Trobe/Black Inc.), James Curran’s 2022 book, Australia’s China Odyssey: from euphoria to fear (NewSouth Books), Mobo Gao et al., eds., Different Histories, Shared Futures: Dialogues on Australia–China (Palgrave 2023), and David Fitzsimmons’ 2023 volume, Australia’s Relations with China: the illusion of choices, 1972–2022 (Routledge).�� For an engaging read into some of the business perspectives on the relationship, readers can consult Glenda Korporaal’s 2021 report, “Behind the headlines: why Australian companies are still doing business with China”, published by the Australia–China Relations Institute at the University of Technology լ�е���. Hugh White’s 2022 Quarterly Essay (86) “Sleepwalk to war: Australia’s unthinking alliance with America” is an insightful analysis of the implications of the US alliance for Australia’s relationship with China, as is The Echidna Strategy by Sam Roggeveen (La Trobe/Black Inc., 2023). Ongoing and regular reports are also published by the Australia–China Relations Institute at the University of Technology լ�е���, the Australian Centre on China in the World, ANU, as well as by the University of լ�е���’s China Studies Centre.��

Engaging China��is available now. Order your copy��.

Matthew A.M. Thomas is��currently a Senior Lecturer in International and Comparative Education at the University of Glasgow, though much of this project was completed whilst holding his position as an Associate Professor of�� Comparative Education and Sociology of Education at the University of լ�е���. His research examines educational policies, pedagogical practices, and teacher and higher education. Most recently, Matthew is the co-editor of��Examining Teach for All��(Routledge, 2021) and the��Handbook of Theory in Comparative and International Education��(Bloomsbury, 2021).

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What prompted you both to write this book?

For many of us, the period of 2020–22 was a time of depression and exhaustion about the future of Australia’s public universities, with not much positive conversation about their worth and possibilities. We wanted to restart the conversation and see where it led, to examine bold ideas for the future of Australian universities. Little did we know that the new Labor government also wanted to ignite the conversation and, in its first 12 months, would establish��a University Accord Committee to recommend "bold ideas" to sustain universities for the next few decades. What serendipity!

What were your own personal experiences of tertiary education in Australia?

We both had very different experiences. Julia benefited under the Whitlam legacy of fee-free education, and Matthew first experienced tertiary education in Australia as an academic and teacher educator. For both of us, we went to universities that were much smaller than Australian universities now, which are some of the biggest in the world. We’re also both interested in student access as a question of social justice, and we each have a deep commitment to enhancing educational equity, which probably comes from our experiences as university students.

You collaborated with a number of other scholars and experts on Australian Universities. Could you describe the writing and editorial process?

It was so much fun! The project is based on a seminar series, known as the History of University Life,��that has been running for more than a decade. During the COVID-19 pandemic we pivoted’ to a seven-part online webinar series. Each hour-long webinar was moderated by one of us and featured 2–4 individuals speaking about their research, practice, and personal experiences in higher education. The webinars were recorded and are still available on Vimeo and YouTube.

While the webinar series was exceptionally well-received and garnered many views and comments, we felt there was more to be done to ensure we could bring this conversation to others in Australia and beyond.

So we approached many of the individuals featured in the webinar series, as well as other people working in/on higher education, and invited them to contribute a conversation-style chapter for this book. Once our central topics and authors were confirmed, we brought different groups of authors together to collectively discuss how they were planning to approach their chapter, and to receive brief feedback from others involved in the project. This also helped to build a small community within and around the book; while some authors knew each other quite well, others were relative newcomers to the conversation.

As editors, we then reviewed all chapters, offered some constructive comments, and returned the chapters to the original authors for revision. After they submitted a revised version, each chapter was blind reviewed to further enhance the quality of the overall volume and to help ensure the chapters collectively touched on the key issues facing university life in Australia. Final reviews by us as editors were then conducted and the full volume was submitted to the wonderful team at լ�е���.

Everyone was so engaged with the primary objective of the book��–��to be bold!

If you had to single out the most pressing issue facing Australian universities in 2023, what would it be?

How to address access and equity. We have a number of essays on continuing inequalities in higher education which address really important questions. Whitlam’s university reforms established general equity principles, including the support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to attend universities. There have been improvements, sure, but fifty years on there is much work to be done. The majority of universities have still not reached equity targets established in the 1990s and revised in the 2000s. In sum, progress is too slow.

What did you find surprising during your research for Australian Universities?

One thing that was both very surprising and perhaps not surprising at all was the history of higher education reform, and the extent to which various Australian governments and policies were willing to embrace bold and constructive change. There are some interesting examples in the book that go back to the Curtin-Chifley university reforms of the 1940s. But there have also been short-sighted changes. In many instances the book tells a story about how universities and the higher education system in general have been plagued by short-term "fixes" and small initiatives that merely scratch the surface of the fundamental questions and issues facing the Australian public: Who are we? What do we value? Who do we want to become?

What advice would you give prospective students and academic staff ahead of applying for a position at a university?

First, recognise that there are a wide range of academic programs offered across Australia’s diverse institutions. Do as much research as possible to understand whether the specific program, department, and university to which you are applying is a good fit. Where possible, consult both external and internal sources; students and staff on the "inside" of a program, department, and institution sometimes have the best insights into its strengths and weaknesses.

Second, and relatedly, consider how you’re wired and what makes you happy. In most academic circles, research-intensive positions are presumed to be the pinnacle of university life, but conducting research is often an individual endeavour with long timelines between commencing and finishing a research project. Not everyone is wired to enjoy solitary work, or to pursue extended projects that may last months or, more likely, years. For people who are wired differently but still want to work in academia, it may be worth considering teaching-focused or other administrative positions in higher education. While these types of positions are commonly not accorded the same prestige in higher education institutions, we firmly believe they play an integral role within these institutions and make enduring contributions to the public good that is (hopefully) offered by universities.

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Australian Universities��is out now. Order your copy��here.

Your professional background is in music. Can you tell us a bit about how your collaboration with Tiwi singers and song custodians began?

As an orchestral horn player for��20 years I was used to working in an ensemble towards the replication of finite works. In musical theatre shows, for instance, with each audience seeing it for the first time, there’s a responsibility on cast, crew and orchestra to replicate performances exactly. In 2006 I was involved in a project that saw me playing in a contemporary jazz ensemble for the first time. In the jazz project, the open-ended structures and extemporisation without notated music presented a new musical experience for me. It was a steep learning curve, to rethink how I approached ensemble playing. It was in that context of approaching music and performance as a changing, non-repeating medium that I first heard a recorded performance by the Tiwi women. Within the ensemble singing, I could hear a looseness that was not accidental, and it seemed very much as though the women were following a “lead” singer, a millisecond behind the strongest voice, as though they all knew the song but were nonetheless respecting the lead of one voice. This organic, multi-voiced and yet ostensibly unison ensemble performance created a quality I hadn’t heard before, especially in a chorale of voices. It was just beautiful. I started what would become a much longer and deeper journey of learning about Tiwi song than I thought at the time. Without understanding any of the words, I first heard the music, the melodies, the rhythms and the phrases. Perhaps because I wasn’t listening along preconceived expectations of text or language, I heard an organic, subtle shifting of strong beats, of chord change points, and an asymmetry of phrase-length. Digging into the meaning, the language and the philosophies of the songs came later.

The title of your new book, written with Tiwi Elders and knowledge holders, is The Old Songs are Always New. Can you explain where this title came from and what it means?

When we were listening through the archive recordings, I would ask Tiwi Elders what the song was about. They would invariably use the present tense in their description: “He is painting up for Ceremony” or “The Brolga is looking out across his homeland”. I thought at first this was simply due to the fact that they were hearing the song now, so they described it as happening now. Once we began to transcribe and translate the song texts, I realised that the fuller picture is that the text itself of the overwhelming majority of Tiwi song is in the present tense. The singers, recorded across 120 years, all placed their subject matter in the present of the performance event, bringing the ancestor or Dreaming animal and their actions, their story and their voice into the present. The singer and the dancer/s responding to the song manifest that ancestor or being in themselves, rendering them in the present, “now” and “new” each time they are heard. Tiwi listeners often spoke about, and sometimes to, the (long-since deceased) voices as current knowledge holders, imparting their stories through the songs that were then transferred along the lines of singers. The knowledge and the stories move along that generational line of transmission too, so they remain new, rather than stories from the past. Musically too, the extemporised nature of song poetry in the act of performance meant that we knew we were listening to newly composed songs about contemporary subject matter. No Tiwi singer repeats exactly a song from their forebears, so even when performing an “old” song that has been passed down many generations, they add, change and re-order words at their own creative whim, so that the “old” song is also “new”.

The book details the 2009 journey you took with a group of Tiwi colleagues to help reclaim over 1300 recordings of Tiwi songs from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). Can you tell us a bit about this experience?

Finding out that there was a large amount of recorded Tiwi song material in Canberra was at first exciting and then quickly frustrating! The bureaucratic systems made for a lengthy process of paperwork and waiting, made more difficult due to distance and a lack of access at the Tiwi end to emails, printers and phones. Despite all that, once we were on the road, driving from լ�е��� to Canberra and then staying together (in the local YHA) brought us together with a focused and shared goal. It also enabled the Tiwi group to physically claim the recordings. The experience became quite personal, and the materials’ connection with Tiwi family was tangible. The physical CDs held the voices of family and of ceremonial leaders, as well as the ancestral stories and descriptions of ceremony and funerals for loved ones, and so they became important, precious objects. They were far more than their catalogue numbers, their status as archives and the paperwork, copyright and bureaucracy. They were the lives and deaths and genealogies and social history of their people.

What do you consider the key limitations, failures and/or consequences of western archiving practices when it comes to First Nations music?

Among the most problematic issues around archiving practices (especially in the past) is the separation of the material from the custodians. While it was empowering and positive to have “reclaimed” the Tiwi material, many Tiwi wondered why it was taken away and stored in Canberra in the first place. Recordings made for the purposes of research, to be conducted at a distance and without the input of the custodians, has created a division between researcher and subject. More recently, in the context of accessing those old archived recordings, there is a distance (often geographical as well as logistical and administrative) between the care-taking institution and the family and/or community of the recorded singers. The question of copyright ownership is another issue – held by the person who recorded the material, or at their death, their heirs, or, with their permission, the museum or institution, and not by the family of the singer or cultural authorities. In the book we describe the conundrum of Tiwi cultural leaders having to request permission from the recordings’ non-Tiwi “owners” in order to hear the voices of their own family. In terms of the older material, there are also questions of agency – how much did the original Tiwi singers, dancers and mourners understand of the process of recording? How aware were they of the reality of their voices, words, images being captured on audio and film and stored, shown, duplicated and owned by others? For Tiwi people, one’s voice and words are existential with their audience, so in a very real sense, these recordings manifest the performers.

What kind of readership did you have in mind while writing The Old Songs are Always New?

I hope that Tiwi readers will use this book as a document of the Tiwi melodies and song types, as both a historical resource and a record of what the leading song men and women of the last hundred years created, as a way of continuing on their own ways performing Tiwi classical and ceremonial song. I also see this book as an important addition to the reference literature on the song-practice of Australia and on the Indigenous song cultures of the world.

For readers who wish to learn more about Tiwi culture and First Nations creative practices, what other resources might you recommend?

Murli la, songs and stories of the Tiwi Islands, Ngarukuruwala Women’s group, with Genevieve Campbell. Hardie Grant and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. 2023

Animating cultural heritage knowledge through songs: museums, archives, consultation and Tiwi music. Genevieve Campbell, Amanda Harris, Jacinta Tipungwuti and Matt Poll. In Linda Barwick, Jakelyn Troy, Amanda Harris (eds.) Music, Dance and the Archive. լ�е���. 2022

Singing with the ancestors: musical conversations with archived ethnographic recordings. Genevieve Campbell. In Jim Wafer and Myfany Turpin, (eds.),��Recirculating songs: revitalising the singing practices of Indigenous Australia. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics. 2017.

Tiwi Textiles. Diana Wood-Conroy with Bede Tungutalum. լ�е��� 2023.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/sydney-environment-institute/news/2020/11/10/interweaving-voices--recording-through-ayipa-songs.html

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The Old Songs are Always New��is out now. Order your copy��here.

Amanda Kearney is a Professor at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Her research involves addressing themes of Indigenous experience, ways of knowing, land rights and the prevailing impact of settler colonial violence on Indigenous lives and lands and waters.��

Liam M. Brady is Associate Professor in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University. His research is designed to challenge traditional, western-oriented approaches to interpreting and understanding the archaeological record.

Congratulations on the recent publication of your book Jakarda Wuka (Too Many Stories)! How did this project begin?

The project had beginnings back in 1980, when John began travelling over Yanyuwa country with Yanyuwa Families. They showed him rock art on their Country, he took photos, and��the Yanyuwa people shared��stories about this rock art from their own perspectives. As his language skills grew over the intervening years and he got to know more people, his understanding of this rock art grew deeper and more complex. In 2010, Yanyuwa Families invited John, Amanda and Liam to work with them and the li-Anthawirriyarra Sea Rangers to record in detail the rock art sites across Yanyuwa Country, and to have their knowledge about them recorded for, and passed on to, future generations. This information would then also be used to develop management plans for their care and help younger generations of Yanyuwa re-engage with their Country, learning how to care for it through the guidance of senior men and women, and learning rock art recording techniques. We’ve now recorded over 40 sites on eight islands and the mainland, and over 1000 motifs.

The research and writing of this book has been a deeply collaborative effort between Yanyuwa Elders and yourselves as academics. Can you explain a bit about this process?

John has worked with Yanyuwa people for 43 years now. He has travelled widely over Yanyuwa Country and has visited some of the rock art sites many times with various people. There has always been some new angle or perception to explore.

John introduced Amanda to a group of senior Yanyuwa women around 23 years ago, and that began a long-standing relationship between Amanda and Yanyuwa Families. Yanyuwa women have always been bosses for their Country, and they have been incredible teachers to all of us. Amanda had the privilege to work with a core group of senior women, many of whom had also worked with John, and wanted to continue to share their knowledge in a manner that would bring about benefits for their own community. Through her links with senior women, Amanda also began to work with and learn from younger people, in an effort to try and understand the challenges of everyday life in this remote community, and to also explore how Yanyuwa knowledge of Country and their Law prevails and is picked up by each generation. Our project always involved young people, and every field trip was joined by kids who would travel with us and help in all aspects of recording rock art. It was always a multi-generational event, and young people brought a new and fresh perspective to rock art and the experience of being on Country.

When we were recording the sites and motifs, there was always a hive of activity. Liam was working with the Sea Rangers to document the motifs using digital photography, sketches and other standard archaeological recording methods, while John and Amanda sat with Yanyuwa jungkayi (owners) and ngimirringki (managers), talking about the sites and motifs. These conversations did not start or end at the sites; they were built upon over time as people remembered more about them or explained their meaning after careful contemplation. This type of collaboration means we didn’t just fly in and record the places and leave; the project was an ongoing, unfolding process over 40 years.

We were fortunate to secure funding from the McArthur River Mine Community Benefits Trust, who have been supporting education initiatives for the four language groups of the region. The trips to rock art sites and the many conversations we had with Yanyuwa Families about rock art began to raise other questions, most notably about the role of kinship in structuring and guiding the processes of Yanyuwa negotiation and engagement with these motifs and sites in contemporary contexts. From here it became apparent that “a painting is not just a painting”; a painting is part of Yanyuwa Law and an interconnected world that draws on stories, knowledge and kinship to derive meaning.

Jakarda Wuka (Too Many Stories) has an inviting and expansive storytelling quality. Did this develop naturally, or was it a conscious decision?

The storytelling aspect was a natural decision because we want this book to be available for Yanyuwa people and their descendants. This is a book about their Country and their families, so it is more appropriate to tell it in this way as opposed to the technical jargon academics tend to use. The storytelling approach also reflects how we encountered sites and motifs; for example, we were asked by senior Yanyuwa men and women to visit and record places for a variety of reasons, including memories of camping at specific places in the past. It was often through stories that we came to learn about rock art, how it might be changing, how people have interacted with it over time, and its important place in Yanyuwa Country. Telling stories is an incredibly important way to learn, and when working with a community for whom orality is the highest form of expression, you have to learn to listen and appreciate the subtlety of how knowledge comes to be shared. There have been so many sit-down camp-fire chats as part of this project, and they are by far the best memories we take from this whole time working with Yanyuwa. Archaeologically speaking, we could have undertaken pedestrian surveys of the dissected sandstone country, identifying potential places that could have had rock art, but instead it was the knowledge and experiences of the Yanyuwa men and women we worked alongside that shaped how the project unfolded.

The book is beautifully illustrated with full-colour graphics, maps and photographs throughout. Was it important to you that this journey through Yanyuwa Country be documented visually as well as descriptively?

Very important. The visual aspect of rock art and Yanyuwa Country is undeniably where its beauty is found. The Gulf can only be fully appreciated when you see the expanse of open sea, the islands and the rock art. We hope that, by including so many colour graphics, we can take people on a journey into Yanyuwa Country so that they can see it for its significance and cultural importance. Any book about rock art needs to be in colour to better appreciate its visual aspects and its spectacular appeal, but the addition of maps, illustrations, and digital animations add a whole other level to the act of seeing and knowing Yanyuwa Country. The visual elements of this book complement the orality of the stories that give each of the images meaning.

Tell us a bit about what you learned working closely with Yanyuwa Elders and spending time on Country. How might these lessons influence your future projects and research practices?

For John, this research and the resultant book has been part of a continuum in regard to the work he does. From Liam’s archaeological perspective, he discovered that “artefacts” such as rock art are more complex than what they initially seem. A painting is not something unchanging with a single meaning. When Yanyuwa people share stories and knowledge about the motifs, a whole other story emerges, one where none of the rock art is considered to have been made by humans, and the state of motifs is directly attributable to the “old people”, spirits of deceased kin. At another level, to properly understand Yanyuwa rock art has meant learning about kinship, and how kinship underpins how people relate to, interpret and understand rock art. Upon reflection, Amanda would say that time spent on Yanyuwa country has been the most immersive and awesome of learning encounters. Yanyuwa people have been generous teachers and mentors and have enriched all of our lives and careers. The depth and breadth of Yanyuwa knowledge and Law is impressive, and when you consider the fact that comparable Indigenous Laws and knowledges map on to each Indigenous territory around Australia, it does bring a realisation that Australia has the most incredible cultural and linguistic complexity, something that all Australians should take the time to consider and respectfully learn from.

What key messages do you hope readers will take from this book?

One of the key messages is that “a painting is not just a painting”; there are layers of meaning attached to motifs that vary according to people’s life stages, knowledge of kin and Country, etc. Also, the fact that rock art can change, motifs can be made and taken away by spirits of deceased kin and Dreamings. This is a reminder that Country is alive, and active with the presence of ancestors. Nothing is static, and we should take from this that we all exist in relation to our living environment, and we should show it respect and care. When one sees a motif, it may not be there the next time someone visits. The spirits of deceased kin are active; for example, when people no longer visit Country or too many senior people are dying, the spirits are sad and take paintings away, but when people come to visit Country, they are happy, and they might express that through making a painting. Lastly, there is no word in Yanyuwa for “art”, so describing rock art can be challenging. Thus, there are core issues of translatability between a Yanyuwa way of knowing things and the way the western world might want things to be known.

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What have you been working on at SUP?

I’ve been working on a variety of wonderful activities: writing alt text, typesetting in InDesign, planning marketing calendars and social media posts, crafting nonfiction indexes, to name a few. They offered to let me dip my fingers into every pot and I have taken full advantage of that opportunity!

What has been the best part of the role? How about the most challenging?

The best part of the role has been working with the incredible team at SUP, as well as the wider library and university staff; there is such a positive, productive atmosphere within their space that I felt immediately welcomed and appreciated, even as a newcomer. The most challenging part has been realising I will have to stop working with them all!

Has anything surprised you about SUP/scholarly publishing?

Yes, actually - I was shocked by how much slower the pace of scholarly publishing is compared to trade publishing! After multiple semesters learning about demanding expectations of profit and efficiency in commercial publishing, it was a relief to find that those are not the only options out there for graduates. I’ve never been enamored with corporate economics and I was so glad to discover publishers like SUP who value their books over their ROI.

What skills have you used most during your internship?

Dr Agata would be so happy to hear that the technical skills I learned in the classroom were immensely helpful during the internship, even indispensable; being not only familiar with InDesign but confident with it is not just a massive leg-up, but several legs! Having the tech theory already lodged in my mind before applying it practically left me feeling well-prepared to hit the ground running.

What was your dream job when you were twelve? What is your dream job now?

When I was twelve, I wanted to be Monet, living in a gorgeous cottage in France and painting the same bridge over and over again. As an adult, my dream job is less a specific position than a general desire to do something that allows me to help artists bring their vision into the world without sacrificing that incredible post-covid work-life balance we all dream about. Books are my favorite artistic medium, so book publishing is my chosen avenue towards that goal.

You have to take a week-long road trip with a fictional or historical character. Who do you choose and why?

I will cheat slightly and choose two historical characters, as I would love to take a week-long road trip with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud; together they radically altered how we view human consciousness, and I would thoroughly enjoy hearing their original ideas debated within the confines of a car, without the trappings of twenty-first century psychoanalysis. I (personally) find Jung brilliant and Freud batshit, so it would be awesome to argue with them both!

What are you planning to do next?

Now that I’ve finished my degree, I plan on taking it as slow as I can - I moved to լ�е��� three years ago and only now feel settled enough to branch out of my home suburb. I hope to find a job doing editorial work, but I’m in no rush to leave my current gig playing with babies in a gym creche; living in Australia is itself a joy and an immense privilege!

Katy Maas is a nearly graduated Master of Publishing student living in լ�е��� with her partner and two cats.

Where does your love for music and dance come from?

Perhaps a simple answer is from my grandmother who lived with us when I was small and who was my first piano teacher, and from my aunts who danced throughout their lives. The more complex answer is that music and dance are such rich modes for understanding the world, and this is something I learn more about all the time. As a historian, I see the ways that histories of song on this continent and of music making and music institutions illuminate so much about our bigger shared stories. Sound can carry culture, history and stories of place through time in embodied forms that enrich the visual and paper sources we’re used to thinking about. I love the ways that sound and movement allow us to hear and understand history in different ways than just reading and writing.

Your research focuses on gendered and intercultural musical practices. In what ways do these practices intersect in your work?

I’m interested in hearing voices that are often excluded from music histories or cultural histories. My early scholarship was focused on women composers, and I was intrigued by the way that histories of music quickly adjusted the story of musical cultures to leave women out. Several of the women composers I studied had highly successful careers as composers during their lifetimes, with their works performed frequently and by major companies, but then after their deaths, histories were written featuring the male composers of their era as though the women had never existed.

In histories of Australian music, there are also erasures. Australian musicology has had a very strong narrative about “Australianist” art music where many non-Indigenous composers have used Aboriginal-themed elements in their works, without involving Indigenous people in any way. And yet, the range and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander song and dance practices on this continent is bewildering. I want to write histories of music in this place that listen to those practices and keep them at the heart of how we define the shape of music histories here.

So, these are the kinds of themes I’m interested in – how can we listen more closely to the stories of the places we’re in, and to the voices of people in them? And, through this listening, what conventions in our music and cultural histories might need to be reimagined?

Music, Dance and the Archive brings together experts and practitioners in various fields (e.g. performance, curation and academia) to explore the reinvigoration, democratisation and decolonisation of the archive. How important was it to include perspectives from a variety of disciplines?

It’s exciting to see the new directions that open up when you have people talking to each other from different disciplinary perspectives. One of the things about music and dance is that the separation we have between them in a Western intellectual or creative discipline is difficult to sustain outside of Western art music, or Euro-American dance modes. In many Indigenous cultural practices, music, dance (and body painting, story, place, artworks) are barely able to be separated. And in this book we also bring in another discipline through our interest in archival studies. Linda Barwick and I have worked closely together building and running the PARADISEC archive for many years, so we’re thinking about archives from practical and technical perspectives as well as thinking about using archival collections in our research.

Most exciting in the book I think is the way some of the contributors take this idea of “the archive” beyond a physical or digital collection of materials to something much more expansive. And this is the kind of thinking that can result from interdisciplinarity. In our introduction we draw on Alice Te Punga Somerville’s conceptualisation of a “sea of archives” in which “Indigenous texts might be carved, oral, written, sung, woven, danced”. And in the book’s chapters there are other wonderful examples, such as Rosy Simas’ exploration of her Haudenosaunee body as “an ever-evolving archive” of cultural memories and practices. And Chi-Fang Chao’s suggestion that “embodied re-enactment of history” through Taiwanese Indigenous Theatre can resist or represent official archival accounts of Indigenous performance.

What can Indigenous research methods, from Australia and around the world, reveal about the limits of colonial archiving practices?

In conceiving this book, we planned to think about the ways music and dance records are important archives of culture, and to highlight the valuable records of song and movement held in archival collections. However, the more we engaged and discussed the ideas with the scholars and creative artists who have contributed to the book, it became clear that the book’s themes would be about the limitations of archives for embodied cultural practices, as much as the potential of engaging with archives. One important Indigenous research method is relationality – the understanding of the interconnectedness of all living things, place, language, song and ancestors – and so many of the ways the contributors engage with histories of culture stored in different kinds of archives are about bringing them back into relation with living practices. Keeping records safe in an archive has value in this context – it can allow access to records of the past that can be made sense of in the present – but colonial archives also hold only fragments of cultural practice, and engaging with colonial records often means confronting painful and difficult histories, and stripping back imposed interpretative layers. As Jakelin Troy, Linda Barwick and I write in our introduction to the book, bringing Ngarigu song records out of the archive into embodied relationship can enable a sense of ownership of hidden artefacts of cultural life that would otherwise remain just ink on paper.

What did you find surprising during your research for Music, Dance and the Archive? Or from the research of the other contributors?

One of the delightful surprises is to see the shape that collaborative work takes in really innovative forms of academic writing. Jack Gray and Jacqueline Shea Murphy’s chapter is a kōrero – a dialogue to address and speak truth. In their back and forth, they weave together creative and academic understandings of the placement of Jack’s ancestral house Ruatepupuke in a Chicago museum. In the warm and generous language of their dialogue, we get a glimpse of the collaborative and reciprocal relationships that have shaped Jack’s creative engagements with his wharenui.

Some of the other co-authored chapters also feature interweavings of the different voices that have brought the chapter to life. In their chapter, Jodie Kell and Cindy Jinmarabynana write about the Diyama (cockle shell) song. Their work is not just in the writing, but they have performed together for several years in the Ripple Effect band. So through this chapter we see how Jodie and Cindy bring old versions of this song from the archive into an all-women rock band, opening up possibilities for including women’s perspectives on An-barra culture through performing the songs in innovative new settings, as well as through their conversations and writings about this process.

What are you working on now? How might readers follow and support your work?

At the moment I’m finalising the manuscript for a big new edited volume – a Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia. Clint Bracknell (also a contributor to Music, Dance and the Archive) and I are editing this together and aim to create an inclusive account of music-making on this continent that places Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musics at the centre of things. The book also takes in a range of musical genres, styles and practices. We’re expecting it to be out early next year (2024). Later this year, I’ll start working on my new ARC Future Fellowship project, building a team of collaborators to work on the project: Resonant Histories of Musical Encounter in Australia. This continues the theme of understanding Australia’s cultural past, colonial history and Oceanic location through music and sound.

Most of my recent writing is available Open Access, and links to my work and that of some of the collaborators on Music, Dance and the Archive are on a new project site, along with visualisations of some of the research that came out of this project: https://www.reclaimingperformance.info/publications/. From time to time I also share updates on new work via Twitter as @AmandaHarrisSyd, and links are available through my University of լ�е��� profile:��https://www.sydney.edu.au/music/about/our-people/academic-staff/amanda-harris.html.

Music, Dance and the Archive��is out now. Order your copy��.

Peter Chen is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations where he teaches Australian and regional politics, media politics, and public policy. He is the author of��Animal Welfare in Australia: Politics and Policy��(2016) and��Australian Politics in a Digital Age��(2013) and the co-editor of��Double Disillusion: The 2016 Australian Federal Election��(2018).

The first edition of the��Australian Politics and Policy��Open Access textbook was published in 2019. How did this project come about? When and how did you decide to make the book open access?��

Open access came first. Colleagues in the political science department at լ�е��� University had been talking about an open access textbook for some years, as a few of them have a strong commitment to open access publishing. We knew there were others who felt similarly in the community. Thus, when a call for proposals was put out by the DVC Education for open access textbooks then, we jumped on that opportunity.

How do the editors and contributors collaborate on this project?��

There’s a spreadsheet! For the original project we recruited a large team of editors that broke the project into sections and worked with authors to shepherd them through the writing, peer review, and editorial processes. This was all a result of the good will of the editorial team and authors, but we were strongly supported by peers who served as reviewers and ensured the product was of high quality. Once the original edition was finalised, we moved to a smaller team who work to select chapters for revision or commission new chapters.��

The third edition of this title was published in January 2023. Can you tell us a bit about the new additions and revisions readers can expect?

Each time we update the book we add new chapters and revise existing ones, so on that front the book includes the “normal” updates (such as a revision of our chapter on Federalism, given the significant changes to federal-state relations we saw during the pandemic); our other updates��appear in��the chapter on Western Australia, the COVID-19 Response, and Media chapters. Our new chapter additions include a stand-alone chapter on social movements and one on arts and cultural policy. Significantly, and why the book is now 53 chapters long, Diana Perche (UNSW) was the lead editor in the production of a new eight-chapter section on public management, policy and administration. This new section was supported financially by the Australian and New Zealand School of Government, and makes the textbook a very robust offering. All for free!��

What are some of the key differences between the junior and senior editions of��Australian Politics and Policy?��

One of the big decisions we made early in the process was to have two versions of the book, the junior and senior editions. The reason for this was to allow the work to be useful across the higher educational landscape, from first year students into masters programs. Overall, most chapters are provided in the two versions: the more concise junior ones and the longer senior ones, where additional detail and complexity is included.

Do you see the��Australian Politics and Policy��Open Access textbook as purely an academic resource? Or do you also hope to engage a more general readership?��

It is a textbook, and that genre has some constraints that make it more oriented to teaching. The volumes are stocked in some public libraries, and being fully online they are widely available, but we’ve not had a lot of feedback from what you might call the “general public”. We have, however, found that the volumes are of interest to teachers who teach politics and civics in high schools, so it’s good to engage with people who are stimulating the interest of students who might go on to study politics and/or policy at university.��

For readers who wish to learn more about Australian politics and policy, what other resources would you recommend?��

There are great explainers and other free resources provided by the Museum of Australian Democracy [https://www.moadoph.gov.au/] and the Parliamentary Education Office [https://peo.gov.au/]. Katharine Murphy’s podcast Australian Politics, produced by the Guardian [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/series/australian-politics-live], is always good listening and up to date. For more substantial reading, there are other good textbooks around including Alan Fenna and Rob Manwaring’s Australian Government and Politics (2021), Stewart Jackson et al’s Australian Politics in the Twenty-First Century (2022, 2^nd edition) and the classic Althaus et al Australian Policy Handbook (2022, 7^th edition). You might be able to find them in your library!

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Throughout Goldfish in the Parlour, you communicate a powerful sense of respect and compassion for marine life. Where does this come from for you?

I’ve been interested in animal welfare and subsequently animal rights since 1972 when I became a vegetarian at sixteen. It had always been clear to me that there is something wrong with the way that animals are treated, but that practical personal step of giving up eating meat and fish came then. So really it’s been all my adult life. And it’s about treading lightly on the earth. It seems to me that change comes from a myriad of personal decisions and that the moral scope of society is never widened by governments but only by concerned citizens. And once there are enough of them the thing becomes a political issue with votes tied to it and more starts to happen. But it has to start with an individual decision.

The book contains many fascinating details and anecdotes (from octopus capers to the evolution of women’s seaside fashion), along with meticulous research and analysis. How important is it for you to both entertain and inform the reader? How do you strike a balance between both objectives?

I try to write in such a way that you don’t have to be a specialist academic to understand what I’m saying. Also very few, if any, days go by when something doesn’t strike me as amusing, and this gets built into my books as I am writing them. At the same time I am a scholar with a background in some of the most rigorous disciplines – philology, codicology and palaeography – so traditional scholarly methods and, especially, tests for the authenticity of evidence are hardwired into me. I’m lucky that, over the years, I’ve stumbled on a way of making serious scholarship accessible and entertaining. And I’ve always been able to write very fluently, so that helps.

In the book, you note that sea creatures are often overlooked in animal rights and welfare legislation. Do you see this changing in the future?

Maybe in some countries. I don’t think much is likely to happen in Australia as the default position of government is usually to ask industries to develop self-imposed regulatory codes rather than [introduce] legislation when it comes to anything to do with agriculture (including pisciculture), and its unlikely the fishing industry or fish farming industry is going to impose on itself a code which would pay more attention to the welfare of fish. And I have no objection to agriculture or fishing in itself, just to the way it is often conducted. I’m not sure if the now extensive academic field of animal studies will take up fish or not.

You have published on a wide variety of subjects from medieval romance to the history of cricket, as well as animal history. As a reader and a researcher, what other historical subjects or eras do you find particularly appealing?

I’ve had a somewhat unusual career. I started as a classicist doing Latin and Greek, then moved on to a BA in medieval Germanic and Celtic philology (Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Welsh and Irish), then a PhD on the transition of English medieval verse romance into Renaissance prose romance and a PG Cert in palaeography. And I spent very little time as a lecturer. Almost the whole of my 40-year career was spent as a head of department, Dean or DVC, and sometimes acting VC, so I never had a contract which required me to do research or take any notice of the university’s research plans as far as my own work was concerned. Being a curiosity-driven scholar, this enabled me to write what I liked about whatever I was interested in at the time. So the answer to the question about what else interests me is hard to answer as I never know where things will take me. My current passion is Syriac, for example. I came to animals in the mid-90s when I wrote a couple of articles about speciesism, followed by a book called Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation, which many people see as the first monogram which sought to put animals at the centre of critical inquiry. Since then I’ve worked almost exclusively on animals, mainly on the history of human–animal relationships in the Victorian era, and I’m increasingly interested in Victorian cults and crazes. If I had access to the materials, I’d like to write a history of zoos in nineteenth-century India, but that is not going to happen. There’s also room for a full-length study of Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoo, and that is a greater possibility as I spent a good deal of time on that when I was writing The Tiger that Swallowed the Boy, which was a study of zoos, menageries and the exotic animal trade in Victorian England.

For readers looking to understand more about human–animal history, what other books might you recommend?

I blush to recommend my own Obaysch: A Hippopotamus in Victorian London. But I will. I think Helen Cowie’s Exhibiting Animals in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Victims of Fashion are excellent, as is Andy Flack’s The Wild Within, which is a history of Bristol Zoo. Carol Freeman’s Paper Tigers is a fascinating study of perceptions of thylacines and a model of its kind.

What key messages or lessons do you hope readers will take from Goldfish in the Parlour?

Don’t say you’re a vegetarian if you eat fish! More seriously, it is that all our interactions with animals have a constructed history, and knowing something about that history will probably help us to be kinder in our treatment of animals. And also that utilitarianism is not a credible basis for an ethical framework.

Goldfish in the Parlour: The Victorian Craze for Marine Life is out now. Order your copy here.

Robbie Mason interned at SUP in the second semester of 2022 as part of the Master of Publishing degree at the University of լ�е���.

What have you been working on at SUP?

A little bit of everything! I’ve done some marketing work; for example, designing a web banner and flyer, making social media content for recently-published books and conducting Q&A interviews with authors. I’ve done editorial work including writing alt text and proofreading. I’ve also done some indexing, which has involved learning how to use the digital publishing software IGP.

What has been the best part of the role? How about the most challenging?

The best part was the people. Being in a healthy work environment really makes a difference. Everyone at SUP has been so friendly and encouraging. At no point did my internship feel like a chore.

The most challenging part was adapting to the work rhythm of new skills like indexing. I always felt I was a bit slow with indexing but it is a time-consuming activity. It was just a matter of getting used to labour-intensive tasks which you can’t turn around right away. ��

Has anything surprised you about SUP/scholarly publishing?

I knew from my uni course, the Master of Publishing, that a lot of time goes into scheduling and planning the production of a book, but it still surprised me how important this planning is. Discussions around whether a book would be ready according to the schedule dominated almost every morning meeting. The other side of working with a small publisher is that everybody has a hand in everything. It’s a small team so people lend a hand where they can. It certainly makes things more interesting.

What skills have you used most during your internship?

I’ve used my knowledge of the Adobe Creative Cloud to create images and marketing material for SUP, probably more than I expected before starting this internship. I’ve never had ‘professional’ training in visual design but I’ve picked up and practiced these design skills through university courses and previous internships. Being an editor for the USyd student rag Honi Soit forced me to learn how to use the Adobe Creative Cloud in the first place, and that’s probably the best place to learn. I was thrown headfirst into the deep end back then! I also made a 64 page zine (a small print run of 50 copies) in conjunction with two DIY music/arts events earlier this year. It’s pleasing to see my visual design work being well-received considering I haven’t had extensive formal training.

What was your dream job when you were 12? What is your dream job now?

From the moment I learned to read and write, I always wanted to be a writer. Either that or I was dreaming of being Australia’s next football (soccer) superstar. Tim Cahill 2.0. My parents are very old-fashioned (bless them) so I never watched TV as a kid. I rarely played computer games. There was no PlayStation in my household. Sometimes people reminisce about TV shows they watched when they were younger and I have no idea what they’re talking about. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I lost myself in books and spent many late evenings kicking a football with my brother or my mates or by myself, if no one else was free. I’d churn through fantasy and science-fiction books, often multiple per week. The football dream died hard. I stopped playing when I was 18. But I’ve had a few pieces of writing published here and there; I think enough to call myself a ‘freelance writer’ – whatever the heck that means anyway. And now I’m working with books. You could say I’m pretty much living my dream. So, yes, I’m a happy chappie.

You have to take a week-long road trip with a fictional or historical character. Who do you choose and why?

This is a tough one! Dwight from The Office? He’s just so bloody weird, I think I’d be laughing the whole way, which would help pass the time. But he’d also be endlessly annoying so I’m not sure how that would go down…

What are you planning to do next?

No clue! I’m at a bit of an in-between stage where I’m about to finish my degree and this internship but the only work I have at the moment is my freelance writing which, at the end of the day, pays peanuts. I’m trying to avoid going back to hospitality at all costs.

Robbie Mason is a young freelance writer, creative, gonzo journalism enthusiast and zine-maker, currently studying a Masters of Publishing at the University of լ�е���. He previously completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the University of լ�е���, for which he was awarded the University Medal.��Robbie has written news, feature articles, album appraisals, live music reviews, creative essays, fictional short stories and more for a variety of publications including, but not limited to, Vice, Voiceworks, Honi Soit, ARNA, Verve Zine and Pulp. He likes modified cars, wearing fishnets on his arms when he’s not at work and a hot cup of tea in the morning while he watches strangers hakk on the internet. None of these things are meant to work together. Robbie makes them work.

You can find more of Robbie's writing via his newsletter at .

Dr Betty Con Walker, author of Casino Clubs NSW, has published another incisive article exposing the myths��that stop the NSW government and political parties from implementing changes to reduce the harm of gambling.��

The SUP online store will be closed from 12 December and reopen on Monday 9 January. Orders placed during this period will be fulfilled soon after our return in the new year.

You can also speak with your local bookseller about ordering SUP titles in. In Australia and New Zealand, all SUP books are distributed to bookshops by NewSouth Books and Alliance Distribution Services.

In Europe, the United Kingdom and the Middle East, SUP books are distributed by Gazelle Book Services.��

We look forward to sharing another year of good reading with you in 2023.

What is it about Eleanor Dark’s writing that attracted you to it? Why have you chosen to focus on her work specifically?

When I came to design a research project I knew I wanted to investigate Australian modernism. I knew I wanted to look at women writers.

As I investigated the different women writing in that period, I was drawn to Eleanor Dark because I had read some of her work before. I had read Prelude to Christopher, her early novel, many years before and found it such a compelling and unusual book, so it had stayed with me. When I came to look at the rest of Dark’s body of work, I was really surprised and intrigued to discover how varied it was from short stories and poems to more recognisably modernist texts like Prelude to Christopher and Waterway to historical fiction such as The Timeless Land. I thought it would be interesting to look at why there was such variety in her work and how that was a product of the material conditions that were operating at the time. But Dark’s body of work is really extensive. She has ten published novels and a whole lot of other work that wasn’t published. I chose the interwar period because I thought Eleanor Dark’s work provided an interesting window into what was happening in Australian literature more broadly in that period.

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You give a strong sense of Eleanor Dark as a writer who broke moulds, who refuses neat classification. Do you believe Eleanor Dark was/is a misrepresented writer? Do you believe Eleanor Dark’s writing has received the attention it deserves?

That’s a very interesting question. In terms of Australian writers of the period, Eleanor Dark has fared fairly well in terms of critical attention. Most Australian literary scholars know of her work. Also the Australian creative writing community tends to know of Eleanor Dark, mostly because of the work of Varuna, the national writer’s house – Dark’s former home – which is now used for writing residencies. It means she is now part of our national story.

In terms of the general public, I don’t think many writers of that period are known, although some people do remember studying The Timeless Land at school. A lot of other people tell me they’ve never heard of Eleanor Dark. In terms of critical attention, it’s been quite sporadic and piecemeal over the years. There hasn’t been a lot of sustained scholarly work on Eleanor Dark’s writing. Perhaps that’s in part due to the fact that her work is really extensive. Particular books have come in and out of fashion at particular times and others have been overlooked. That’s really due to the prevailing trends in literary criticism at the time. For instance, for a long time after the Second World War period, Dark’s body of work was defined by The Timeless Land historical trilogy. She was seen as a writer of historical fiction. In more recent years – I’d say over the last two decades – as modernism has received renewed energy, attention has shifted to Eleanor Dark’s more contemporary and recognisably modernist works. Then there are the novels by Eleanor Dark such as Sun Across the Sky, which has never really attracted much critical attention.

In my book, Middlebrow Modernism, I wanted to look at the varied ways that Dark responded to Australian modernity and international modernity and the range of fiction by Dark – her short stories, her romance fiction, her more obviously modernist works and her historical fiction. It’s only by examining all those varied forms that we can appreciate what a flexible, engaged and creative writer Dark was.

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Do you believe that Australia’s cultural cringe has shaped the treatment of middlebrow modernist writing – both among literary critics and the broader public?

Firstly I’d say that in any context, the middlebrow tends to be dismissed, overlooked and often viewed as a lesser category. In fact, when the term ‘middlebrow’ was coined in the 1920s, it was a pejorative term. Even from its very formation as a category, the middlebrow was seen as a little bit laughable, a bit stodgy, a bit boring.

In Australia though I think it’s not only taken a while to recognise middlebrow modernism; it’s taken a while to recognise that modernism itself developed and emerged here, rather than as something that was imported from elsewhere. But over the last few decades critics in art, history and literature have been identifying Australian modernisms and talking in really exciting ways about how we have formed our own modernisms that were different from more metropolitan locations such as England or America or Europe. But perhaps what has been less obvious in those questions about Australian modernism is that, in Australia, modernisms did not always emerge through high culture channels as they often did in those metropolitan contexts. In fact they often emerged in Australia through the middlebrow. I argue in the book, drawing on the work of David Carter who has written a lot about the Australian middlebrow, that one reason why modernism emerged through these middlebrow channels was that Australia lacked the high culture institutions that other places had. Australia didn’t have many small university presses or independent presses that would publish a small print run. Because of Australia’s settler-colonial status, writers needed to navigate what publishers both here and overseas wanted them to write. That often meant that writers and artists had to have a very flexible approach where they could produce some commercial work and some that was more in line with what they wanted to produce. The fact we are slow to recognise middlebrow modernism is less a product of a deliberate cultural cringe than a larger difficulty faced in settler colonial countries.

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Who do you see as the target audience for this book? Is it only literature studies, specialists and students? Or do you think the book appeals to a wider cross section of the population?

As a book that addresses and tries to intervene in some particular critical questions, I’d say that the primary audience of the book is literary studies specialists and students. The book attempts to negotiate questions such as: what is settler colonial modernity? And how did that differ from other forms of international modernity? What does it mean to be a cosmopolitan writer who is also negotiating forms of national culture? What is the relationship between liberal humanism and modernism? How does the middlebrow relate to modernism? So those are questions that literary studies specialists would be particularly interested in, and also perhaps a broader range of scholars such as those working in cultural studies, or art history or just history.

At the same time, though, I hope that someone who’s interested in Eleanor Dark’s writing or the interwar period could pick up the book and find that there’s something in there for them. I have tried to keep the book grounded in the story of Eleanor Dark’s publication history and the way that she negotiated both local and international forms of culture. Although the book isn’t a biography, it does explore her novels and her writing in relation to that bigger story of her life and the way that she, sometimes strategically, sometimes with frustration, but always flexibly and intelligently, negotiated all these different constraints and conditions.

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What would your advice be for postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers and early career academics hoping to have their first book published?
I suppose my main piece of advice would be to keep persevering if this is something that you really want to do. With our precariously employed academic situations, for many postdoctoral students and early career researchers, it usually means that some of the time we will be working on our first book without institutional support or a wage. And that’s a really difficult and often lonely path to take. It certainly often was for me. In my case, I was finishing the book during the year when I had my first baby. It certainly wasn’t ideal conditions. But I kept at it because I realised it mattered to me to have this project out in the world. I had so enjoyed doing the research, particularly the archival research that I undertook at the National Library of Australia, the State Library of Australia and at Varuna. I was lucky enough to have lots of time at those places, and to really delve into the archives. I felt that I wanted that material to be read by people, that I had something that was worth hearing. So having good people around me who could encourage me when I wanted to give up was really important. Also, remind yourself of why you care about the project, why you want it to be out there.

If you’re a postgraduate student, I think it’s worth thinking about your doctoral thesis in terms of the eventual book you’d like to publish. Think about how you can structure your thesis in a way that might work for publication later down the track. There will be more that you have to do to your thesis after it’s been accepted in order to prepare it for publication, but, if you can have the bones of it there in your doctoral thesis, that will really help with turning it into a book.

I suppose the last piece of advice is something that the person who edited my book, Robert Dixon, told to me and that is to keep thinking about your reader: what they would be expecting from the book and what they need to find in the book. The project is so familiar to you, but not to them. Keep them in mind throughout the writing process. And good luck.

Middlebrow Modernism: Eleanor Dark's Interwar Fiction is out 1 October 2022. Order your copy��here.

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What inspired you to zero in on animal law as an area of expertise?��

The establishment of Voiceless, the animal protection institute, and the legal academics who pioneered animal law in Australia were my primary inspiration. I’d cared about animal welfare for a long time but hadn’t connected the dots in terms of my legal career; in hindsight, I’m astonished it took me so long to do so.

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Do you see a disconnect between the groundswell of community support for animal welfare and the laws we currently have in place regarding animal welfare? ��

Most definitely. One of the reasons for writing the book was to explore this discrepancy and why achieving meaningful change for animals is so very difficult.

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What shocked you during your research? ��

Unfortunately, very little! It reinforced a number of things though: the problems are systemic, detailed information is very hard to obtain and there is an enormous gulf between official animal welfare narratives and the legal reality.

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How would you describe your writing process?��

Not as fast as I would like! But it’s less the writing that takes time than the thinking that precedes it and how to conceptualise the issues. An important part of this book is about making connections – between the regulation of apparently disparate animal uses and between the law and its social and economic context. It’s exciting when you discover the connections between different issues and the writing starts to flow but there’s still a great deal of research and lots of redrafting.

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Who do you see as the target audience for this book? Is it only law specialists and students or do you think the book appeals to a wider cross-section of the population?�� ��

While the book is a resource for students and lawyers, my contextual approach should also appeal to a wider audience because the legal detail is included to illustrate the book’s overarching themes. These themes are: the failure of law to protect animals, the reasons for this failure and the way the issues are rationalised. I also present animal law as a kind of story, emphasising the connections between the different chapters and the disconnect between official animal welfare narratives and the facts.

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Apart from writing this book, are there other measures you take to support animal welfare in your own life? And what steps can others take to help?��

I think it’s important to realise there are lots of different ways to help protect animals. The most obvious is our personal choices - not only the food we eat but also the clothes we wear, the animals we choose as companions, how we deal with ‘pest’ animals in our houses and so on. I’m by no means perfect but I have made substantial changes and strive to be mindful in what I do. Supporting animal protection at a community level is another way of helping. For me, this has included volunteering at shelters and fostering cats; for others, it could be contributing as a wildlife carer or supporting not-for-profit organisations in a variety of ways. Also – and this is critical - we need to let our elected representatives know how much we care about animal welfare. I’ve lost count of the number of federal and state MPs I’ve had meetings with to express my concerns as a constituent about the failure to address a wide range of animal welfare issues. We need to think and act politically to achieve needed change and signing online petitions is simply not enough!

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Much of the book revolves around the irony that Australian animal law and codes of practice for minimum accepted standards of animal treatment are inherently skewed towards supporting animal exploitation. You argue that the failure to protect animals is a systemic issue that is reflected, for instance, in the considerable industry influence on the standards-setting process and inadequate resourcing for government agencies regulating animal welfare. What, therefore, do you think the future looks like for animal welfare in Australia?��

At present, deeply conflicted government agencies and ministers are the gatekeepers of the legal and regulatory framework. Without genuinely independent and properly resourced governance structures and greatly increased regulatory transparency, it’s likely we’ll see only minimal improvements in animal protection. There’s some recognition at a political level of a strong community mood for significant change but we need to keep reinforcing this through political engagement.

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Have you ever had concerns about speaking out against animal agriculture – or at least deeply-embedded, sometimes widespread, practices used in the industry?��

I’m concerned about a tendency to dismiss the viewpoint of anyone who is not connected to industry or agriculture even when their work is based on evidence or legal knowledge. Those advocating for reasonable and rational change are too often misrepresented or demeaned by some government and industry representatives.

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You introduced animal law into the Bachelor of Laws degree in 2008, making the University of Wollongong, where you were teaching, one of the earliest Australian universities to teach the subject. Was this journey difficult? Why was animal law not previously part of the tertiary curriculum for law in Australia?�� ��

I was lucky that the Law School at the University of Wollongong was generally supportive of introducing animal law as an elective subject. Some academics have had a more difficult experience. I think the subject was initially viewed as less important or rigorous than traditional law subjects but the increase in scholarship in this field is helping to correct this perspective. There’s also recognition of strong student interest, with animal law now offered at about 17 Australian universities.������

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What would your advice be for postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers and early career academics hoping to have their first book published?

Don’t be afraid to pitch your ideas to��publishers and be prepared to persevere.

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Australian Animal Law: Context and Critique is out 1 July 2022. Order your copy here.

Recently we received a cryptic question from Kimberley Williams, Manager of Digital Collections, about a book held in the Rare Books Collection. “Hello! I'm looking at Virginia Woolf's copy of her first book, and just to confirm, is this typesetter's pencil?”

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The scanned pages that Kim shared with the team.

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Kim shared two images from a copy of The Voyage Out (1915), which most certainly had some rather opinionated notes scrawled across the printed pages – not to mention that a piece of typewritten copy had been pasted over a paragraph. Who would dare do such things to a book?

With this mystery to be solved, the SUP team crossed the foyer to enter the climate-controlled room containing the book itself. Kim and Julie Sommerfeldt, Manager of Rare Books & Special Collections, gently placed the book on a special book pillow for us to carefully turn the pages without causing any damage.

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Kim Williams shows Jo Lyons and Susan Murray the edits in The Voyage Out.

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Here we learned that the blue-pencil edits on the book’s pages were made by Virginia Woolf herself; this was her own copy of the UK edition of The Voyage Out, which she amended for her US publisher. We marvelled at our proximity to Woolf’s own pencil marks and wondered about her motivations in making such edits. Did she re-read the UK edition and wish she had made these changes to the original? Or was she tailoring the book to a US audience? More mysteries to ponder. Such is the magic of these objects that they can place us inside the minds of some of the world’s most esteemed writers.

An exciting moment – viewing the edits Virginia Woolf made in her copy of The Voyage Out.

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It was such a special moment for the team to see this incredible piece of literary history in person. We are very grateful to our colleagues Kim and Julie for sharing this treasure with us.

Rare Book Week gives us an opportunity to appreciate the unique archival materials available to view at the Library. The collection includes early printed books from Europe, Australia, America and Asia, examples of fine printing and binding, and modern limited editions. As we discovered during our visit across the corridor, ownership marks, typesetting marks and annotations provide insights into the history of these significant treasures, the people who worked on them, and their journey to their final home at University of լ�е��� Library.

To find out more about the University’s collection, and to arrange to view some of these treasures yourself, visit

Image credits: Rare Books & Special Collections, the University of լ�е��� Library

Jenny Welsh interned at SUP in the first semester of 2022 as part of the Master of Publishing degree at the University of լ�е���.

What have you been working on at SUP?

I have had the opportunity to work on lots of different tasks at SUP, which has been amazing. I got to proofread some of the upcoming books published in July 2022, create posts for social media and put together the newsletter and some author Q&As. I also attended the book launch for South Flows the Pearl.

What has been the best part of the role? How about the most challenging?

The best part has been being welcomed as a member of the team and having the opportunity to work on a range of different tasks autonomously. The most challenging was probably organising my time effectively.

Has anything surprised you about SUP/scholarly publishing?

I was surprised by the number of books SUP publish each year, considering the team is quite small, but also the range of different topics that the books cover.

What skills have you used most during your internship?

I think probably writing, editing and proofreading skills, but I also got to use my communication skills through taking part in meetings both internally and with authors.

What was your dream job when you were 12? What is your dream job now?

I think my dream job was to be a journalist, although I don’t remember my parents being too impressed – both are science teachers. My dream job now would be to work in editorial or as a publisher for an independent press.

You have to take a week-long road trip with a fictional or historical character. Who do you choose and why?

It would definitely have to be someone funny to keep me entertained – it’s important to have a sense of humour. I can’t really think of any funny fictional characters though, the books I read tend to be so serious! Maybe Paddington Bear, I am reading A Bear Called Paddington with my daughter at the moment, and he has made us laugh a few times.

What are you planning to do next?

I have just started a new job, which is currently taking up a lot of my time! Outside of that I would like to write my own short story and I have plans to develop my website.

Jenny Welsh��is originally from the UK and studied languages at the University of the West of England in Bristol. After graduating, she spent several years living and working in the Netherlands before eventually emigrating to Australia. Since 2019, she has been studying a masters at լ�е��� University and working part-time as a freelance editor.