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Geoffrey Blainey to give public lecture at UNE

September 15, 2006

blainey.jpgProfessor Geoffrey Blainey AO, one of Australia’s best-known social and economic historians, will give a free public lecture at The University of New England next week.

Professor Blainey (pictured here) is the author of more than 30 books, including The Tyranny of Distance, Triumph of the Nomads, A Short History of Australia, Black Kettle and Full Moon, and the best-selling A Short History of the World. He will deliver the Russel Ward Lecture in the Services UNE Function Centre at 5.30 pm on Tuesday 19 September. The lecture, titled “A New Look at Captain Cook: Some Reflections on Australian History”, will revisit some familiar moments in Australian history and examine the way we interpret them.

The distinguished historian Alan Atkinson, who is based at UNE as a Professorial Fellow, invited Professor Blainey to come to Armidale to give the lecture. “Geoff Blainey has contributed an enormous amount to our understanding of Australian history over a very long career,” Professor Atkinson said, “so that he now has a unique standing as a scholar in the field.

“At times he has been controversial, but he has always made a point of sticking to his guns. He also has a high reputation for nurturing the work of younger scholars. He began as an economic historian, with an expertise especially in the history of mining and banking, but he began to branch out at an early age, and his latest forays into the history of the world, including social, cultural and spiritual history, have been remarkably successful. He is a brilliant writer, with a knack for giving a wider significance to the way people of all kinds live their daily lives, and especially the way they make their living.”

Professor Blainey has been Professor of Economic History and Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, and Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University in the United States. He has been Chair of the Australia Council, the Australia-China Council, and the National Council for the Centenary of Federation, and Chancellor of the University of Ballarat. Most recently he was a member of the “History Summit” that met in Canberra to discuss the place of history in the school curriculum. He is one of the few Australians whose biographies appear in Encyclopaedia Britannica.

He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1975.

For more information on the lecture, phone (02) 6773 3067.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at September 15, 2006 02:52 PM