School Research

Research Profile
The School's research effort goes back about fifty years. The quantity of resource material gathered in that time is very considerable, very diverse and in many cases unique. The main repositories are the University Library, the Museum of Antiquities and (at the Heritage Centre) the University and Regional Archives, the New England Historical Resources Centre and the Museum of Education.

The School is particularly distinguished in the field of Classics and Ancient History, UNE being one of a small number of universities in Australia where such scholarship continues to flourish. Members play a leading part in the Australian Society for Classical Studies and produce the journal Antichthon. The School also participates in the Australian Archaeological Institute in Athens Visiting Professor scheme and visits by international scholars, under this and other arrangements, are frequent.

Australian History is also an area of unusual excellence. Two books by early members of the Department of History, Russel Ward's The Australian Legend (1958) and Miriam Dixson's The Real Matilda: Women and Identity in Australia 1788 to the Present (1976), are landmarks in the writing of Australian history. More recently Alan Atkinson's The Europeans in Australia, volume one (1997), has won a number of prizes, and the writing of the third volume is funded by an Australian Research Council professorial fellowship. The School is also currently the home of the Journal of Australian Colonial History, edited by David Roberts. Several members of the School play an active part in the University's Heritage Futures Research Centre, which is designed to explore issues of history and heritage from the point of view of regional communities. Stele, a Student Journal of Antiquity, is also produced in the School.

Since the early 1970s members of the School have also taken the lead, within Australia, in the research and writing of South Asian history. From 1984 they acquired managerial responsibility for both the South Asian Studies Association of Australia [SASA], and its scholarly journal, South Asia. Howard Brasted has served as the journal's Chief Editor throughout this period, during which South Asia has established an international reputation as one of the three leading research journals in the world in the field of South Asian studies. Publication of South Asia was transferred in 2004 to Monash University, but strong links are still maintained with the journal through SASA. Various aspects of European history, medieval, early modern and modern, have also been the subject of recent publications. Lynda Garland is one of the editors of the on-line review journal, Byzantine and Late Antique Review.

More recently the School has expanded to include Studies in Religion, two particular areas of interest being Islam and early Christianity. Majella Franzmann's work on Gnosticism and early Christianity has drawn several grants, large and small, from the Australian Research Council. Studies in Religion has thus helped to augment the School's interest in South Asia and in the eastern Mediterranean. War and Society is another thematic area which is flourishing at present, especially at the postgraduate level.

The methods of scholarship employed in the School are wide-ranging. Linguistic analysis and textual interpretation are important for Classics, Ancient History and Religious Studies, the main languages in use being Greek (classical and koin»), Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic and Hebrew. A sociological and/or socio-historical approach and techniques of feminist criticism are also used in Studies in Religion. Among the modern historians there is a long tradition of local and applied history and in the use of family reconstitution. Aspects of historical geography are another area of interest.