As a locus for deep history research, the Research Centre for Deep History welcomes Australian and international scholars to the Australian National University. These cross-disciplinary collaborations play a vital role in enriching the work of the team.

2022

Associate Professor Bruce Buchan

Bruce Buchan is an intellectual historian whose work focuses on the entanglement of European political thought with the experience of empire and colonisation in the era of Enlightenment.

His recent publications include An Intellectual History of Political Corruption (2014), and Sound, Space and Civility in the British World, 1700-1850 (2019), as well as special issues of Cultural Studies Review (2018), Republics of Letters (2018), and History of the Human Sciences (2019).

Bruce has been invited to visiting professorships at the University of Copenhagen (2015-16) and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (2017), and has been named a Fernand Braudel Senior Research Fellow at the European University Institute in 2021.

Bruce was previously a visitor in 2020.

2021

Associate Professor Anne Clarke

Annie Clarke is Associate Professor in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Sydney University, working across Australian archaeology (Indigenous, historical and contemporary), museum and heritage studies. She has carried out research on the late Holocene archaeology of North East Arnhem Land, Indigenous interactions with Macassans and missionaries on Groote Eylandt, historical inscriptions and graffiti at the Quarantine Station, Manly, and nineteenth century ethnographic collections from PNG.

Annie was also a Visitor from 3rd February 2020 to 28th February 2020.

2020

Sarah Yu

Sarah Yu is the Special Projects Officer with Nyamba Buru Yawuru Ltd, Broome. As an anthropologist she worked on several native title claims and produced several Indigenous Protected Areas plans, including the award-winning Yawuru Cultural Management Plan. Sarah has also curated a number of exhibitions, including the award-winning Lustre: Pearling & Australia. Now completing a doctoral thesis on pearling heritage in the Kimberley, Sarah also brings to the RDHP Program her experience on cultural mapping, interpretation and exhibitions.

Sarah Yu was also a Visitor from 1st August 2019 to the 6th December 2019.

2019

Dr Henning Trüper

Major contributions: Masterclass at RDHP Planning Day, 6 March: Theory and History – Claude Levi-Strauss

School of History Seminar, 27 March: Challenges of Deep Time to Historical Theory and Vice Versa

Henning discussed some of the challenges notions of deep time – more specifically, the deep human past – pose to the ways in which the discipline of historical writing understands itself. He firstly addressed some theoretical features of the notion of “historical time” and inquired into the possibilities of “deepening” it, and the related costs and benefits. Second, Henning developed a historical contextualization of the theoretical features in question, and explored what challenges to deep time emerge from such contexts. He then focused on the changing functions of modern European history writing for the cultural processing of the dead, as this context is, if somewhat unexpectedly, crucial for the problem of historical depth.

Naomi Appleby

Naomi Appleby is a Yawuru and Karajarri woman from Broome (northwest Australia). She is the first of our ANU Laureate Program’s (RDHP’s) Aspiring Future Leaders and was selected as one of the National Museum of Australia’s 2019 Encounter Fellows. Naomi has been employed at Nyamba Buru Yawuru (Yawuru) for four years, working in the Native Title and Environmental Services unit, servicing the Yawuru community and working closely with elders and law bosses to protect Country. She is Yawuru’s next emerging curator working in the Cultural Heritage unit. She is enrolled in the University of Deakin’s graduate diploma course in Land and Sea Country Management. At Yawuru she is training in developing interpretation for the Gwarinman Repatriation Project and the Western Australian Museum. She will also be working on Mangara, Yawuru’s storyline/digital archive project gathering together Yawuru resources and stories. Naomi is enthusiastic and passionate about Indigenous self-empowerment and the continuity of traditional language and culture.

2018

Dr Andreia Pinto Correia

Andreia is a leading composer. Born in Portugal, she currently works in New York. She has received numerous prestigious awards and commissions, including an Arts and Letters Award in music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2020 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. After sharing a Residency with Professor McGrath at the Rockefeller Centre, Bellagio, she developed an interest in Lake Mungo and the Deep Human Past.

Major Contribution: Pleistocene Landscapes

Written for solo alto flute, Pleistocene Landscapes is a reflection on deep time and the metamorphosing of landscapes through history. The work is an homage to an extraordinary ancient historic site and its culture.

Pleistocene Landscapes was written with the generous support of the Australian National University (ANU) and was premiered at the Symposium Understanding the Deep Past across Language and Culture in Canberra on 28 September 2018. The work is dedicated in friendship and with admiration to Professor Ann McGrath. The American premiere was held at Harvard in 2019.

Professor Philippa Levine

Major Contribution: Eugenics Masterclass, 26 July 2018.

Professor Levine conducted a Masterclass in her speciality area, the History of Eugenics, with the focus on the history of notion and whether contemporary genetic practices in any way constitute a modern version of a now-discredited science.