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Dr David Andrew Roberts

David Andrew Roberts

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, School of Humanities

Qualifications

BA(Hons), PhD (Newcastle)

Contact

Email:
Room: E11
Phone: 02 6773 3794 (or +61 2 6773 3794 overseas)
Fax: 02 6773 3520

Affiliations

Areas of Teaching

  • Coordinator Master of History M(Hist)
  • HIST150 Colonial Australia
  • HIST338 Australian Frontiers: Rural and Regional Histories
  • HIST351 Convict Australia
  • HIST354 Aboriginal History Since the Late 18th Century
  • HIST511 Crime, Incarceration, Servitude: Historical Views (with Dr Andrew Piper)
  • HINQ200 History - Uses and Abuses

Research interests

Current research funded by an ARC Discovery Project Grant, titled 'Liberty, Anti‑transportation and the Empire of Morality' [DP1096538] with Prof HM Carey, administered through University of Newcastle

Publications

Books & Monographs

  • Martin Crotty and D.A. Roberts (eds), Turning Points in Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2009.
  • D.A Roberts & A. Parker (eds), Carl Warburton's Buffaloes: Adventures in Arnhem Land, Gecko Books, Marleston, 2007 xxiii + 261 pp.
  • Martin Crotty and D.A. Roberts (eds), The Great Mistakes of Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2006.
  • Ancient Ochres: The Aboriginal Rock Paintings of Mount Borradaile, J.B. Books, Adelaide, 2003 (with Adrian Parker).

Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

  • (with Erik Eklund) Australian Convict Sites and the Heritage of Adaptation: The Case of Newcastle's Coal River Heritage Precinct, Australian Historical Studies, 43:3, 2012, pp. 363-80.
  • 'Remembering ''Australia's glorious League'': The Historiography of Anti-Transportation', Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 14, 2012, pp. 205-215.
  • (with Carol Baxter) Exposing an exposé: Fact versus fiction in the resurrection of Captain Thunderbolt', Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 1-15.
  • The 'Knotted Hands that Set us High': Labour History and the Study of Convict Australia, Labour History, No. 100, May 2011, pp. 33-50.
  • 'A "City on a Hill": Religion and Buildings on the Frontier Mission at Wellington Valley, New South Wales, Australian Religion Studies Review, Vol. 23, No.1, 2010, pp. 91-114.
  • (with Daniel Garland), The Forgotten Commandant: James Wallis and the Newcastle Penal Settlement, 1816-1818', Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, March 2010, pp. 5-24.
  • ‘Bearing Australia's “beloved burden”: recent offerings in Australian convict history’, Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. 33, Issue 2, 2009, pp. 227–236
  • (with Hilary M. Carey), '”Beong! Beong!” (more! more!)”: John Harper and the Wesleyan Mission to the Australian Aborigines', Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol.10, No.1, 2009.
  • (with Martin Crotty), 'Introduction', in M. Crotty and D.A. Roberts (eds), Turning Points in Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2009, pp. 1-17.
  • '26 January 1788: The Arrival of the First Fleet and the "Foundation of Australia"', in M. Crotty and D.A. Roberts (eds), Turning Points in Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2009, pp. 32-47.
  • (with Iain Davidson), '14 000 BC: On Being Alone: The isolation of the Tasmanians', in M. Crotty and D.A. Roberts (eds), Turning Points in Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2009, pp. 18-31.
  • '''language to save the innocent'':Reverend L. Threlkeld's linguistic mission', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol.94, Pt.2, December 2008, pp.107-125.
  • 'Russel Ward and the Convict Legend', Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol.10, No.2, 2008, pp. 37-58
  • (with Jeffrey Atkinson), '''Men of Colour'': John Joseph and the Eureka treason trials', Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol.10, No.1, 2008, pp. 75-98
  • (with Frank Bongiorno) 'Russel Ward's The Australian Legend at (Almost) Fifty', Australian Folklore, No.22, November 2007, pp.43-46
  • 'Introduction', in D.A Roberts & A. Parker (eds), Carl Warburton's Buffaloes:Adventures in Arnhem Land, Gecko Books, Marleston, 2007 pp vii-xxiii.
  • 'More sinned against than sinning': George Arnold Wood and the noble convict', in Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, D. Gare & D. Ritter, Thomson, Melbourne, 2007,pp 122-130.
  • (with Martin Crotty), ‘Introduction’, in Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts (eds), The Great Mistakes of Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2006 pp. 1-13.
  • '”They would speedily abandon the country to the new comers”: The denial of Aboriginal rights', in Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts (eds), The Great Mistakes of Australian History, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2006, pp. 14-31.
  • 'The Frontier', in A. Atkinson, J. Ryan, I. Davidson and A. Piper (eds), High Lean Country: Land, people and memory in New England, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2006, pp. 98-110.
  • '"The Valley of Swells": Educated convicts on the Wellington Valley settlement, 1827-31’, History Australia, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2006, pp. 11.1-11.21.
  • 'Windradyne’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1580-1980, C. Cunneen (ed.), Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005, pp. 408-9.
  • 'A "change of place": illegal movement on the Bathurst frontier, 1822-1825', Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 7, 2005, pp. 97-122.
  • ‘Nautical Themes in the Aboriginal Rock Paintings of Mount Borradaile, Western Arnhem Land’, The Great Circle, Vol.26, No.1, 2004, pp.19-50.
  • ‘The Bells Falls Massacre and Oral Tradition’, in Attwood and Foster (eds.), Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, 2003, pp.150-8.
  • (with Hilary M. Carey) ‘Smallpox and the Baiame Waganna of Wellington Valley, New South Wales 1829-40: the earliest nativist movement in Aboriginal Australia?’, Ethnohistory, Vol. 49, No. 4, November 2002, pp. 821-69.
  • “`A Sort of Inland Norfolk Island”?: Isolation, Coercion and Resistance on the Wellington Convict Station, 1823-26’, Journal of Australian Colonial History,  April 2000, pp. 50-72.
  • ‘Bells Falls Massacre and Bathurst’s history of violence: local tradition and Australian historiography”, Australian Historical Studies 26, October 1995, pp.615-33.

Non-refereed publications and websites

Book reviews

  • T. Moore, Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia 1788-1868,
    Sydney, Murdoch Books, 2010. Reviewed for Reviews in Australian Studies, Vol 5, No 2, 2011.
  • A. Alexander, Tasmania’s Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2009. Reviewed for Reviews in Australian Studies, Vol 4, No 5, 2010.
  • G. Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2009. Reviewed for Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 96, Pt. 1, 99-101.
  • S. Faulker, Life B'long Ali Drummond: A Life in the Torres Strait by Samantha Faulkner (with Ali Drummond). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007. Reviewed for Reviews in Australian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 9, 2008.
  • B. Smith, Australia's Birthstain: the startling legacy of the convict era, Allen & Unwin, 2008. Reviewed for the Australian (Weekend Australian Review), 26-27 April 2008.
  • R. Waterhouse, The Vision Splendid: A Social And Cultural History of Rural Australia, Fremantle, Curtin University Press, 2005. Reviewed for History AustraliaVol.4, No.2, December 2007.
  • C. Dyer, The French Explorers and the Aboriginal Australians, 1772-1839, University of Queensland Press, 2005. Reviewed forInternational History Review, Vol.29, 2007.
  • J. Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788-1838. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002. Reviewed for International History Review, Vol.27, 2005.
  • J. Campbell, Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia, 1780-1880. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Reviewed in Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2003.
  • A. Curthoys, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2002. Reviewed in Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2003.
  • R. Johnson, The Search for the Inland Sea: John Oxley, Explorer, 1783-1828, Melbourne University Press, 2001. Reviewed in Journal of Australian Colonial History , 2002.
  • L. Frost and H. Maxwell-Stewart (eds.), Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives. Melbourne University Press, 2002, Reviewed in Journal of Australian Colonial History, 2002.

HDR Supervision

Successful PhD theses completions (as primary supervisor)

  • Stephen Cunneen, 'From Phillip to Grose: Leadership in New South Wales from 1788 to 1794' (2011)
  • David Stoneman, 'The Church Act: The Expansion of Christianity or the Imposition of Moral Enlightenment' (2011)
  • Janette Holcomb, ' Opportunities and Risks in the Development of the NSW Shipping Industry, 1821-1850' (2010)
  • Margaret Ina Vivers, 'Female Perspectives: A Study of the Colonial Texts of Adelaide Bowler and Lucy Gray' (2008)
  • Kate Gahan, 'Live Like Us: The Aborigines Welfare Board and Assimilation in Northern NSW' (2007)

As secondary supervisor

  • Shawn Christopher Rowlands, 'The Manufacturers: Collection, Display and Aboriginality at the Queensland Museum From the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century' (2011)
  • Kerry Mills, '"Of the People, By the People, For the People": Law-Making in New South Wales, 1843-1855' (2007)

Successful MA(Hons) theses completions (as primary supervisor)

  • Kris McCabe, "’Harry Grimsby’ Reconsidered. The New South Wales Colonial Constabulary 1825-35' (2009)

PhD thesis examined

  • 1 for Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University
  • 1 for School of Classics and History, University of Tasmania
  • 1 for Department of History, University of Sydney
  • 1 for School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland

MA theses examined

  • 1 for School of Historical and European Studies, La Trobe University (2012)