A new $1.5 million research project will produce Australia’s first comprehensive history of cancer, with University of New England research to provide critical insights into the role of alcohol.
The five-year project awarded funding by the Australian Research Council in May 2026, and led by the University of Melbourne, will trace the changes over the last century in the understanding of cancer and its causes, funding support, policy priorities, education campaigns, and societal beliefs, expectations and lived experience of the disease.
The researchers say that with the benefit of hindsight, seeing what has been done to understand cancer and improve outcomes can help inform what can be done in future, with the advances in technology, medical practice, and changes in society.
Dr Matthew Allen will be a contributing researcher from UNE, with a special interest and expertise into the history of alcohol in Australia. He says the backstory and influence of alcohol in Australia is an important part of the overall story of cancer in Australia.
“Cancer was once seen as a scourge that was a solvable problem – that once we understood more about it, we’d be able to fix it. There was real optimism after World War I that the cure would be found. But 100 years later, we see that has not been the case,” Dr Allen says.
Cancers remain a complex medical problem, now experienced by 50 per cent of the population in their lifetime, with many causes and contributing factors. The way those factors are understood, prioritised and addressed change with societal views, values and the political power and will at each moment in time.
The story of alcohol highlights this complexity.
“Alcohol has been deeply embedded in Australian culture since colonial times, and it’s healthiness has always been debated, but these debates have had very little effect overall on its use."
“As part of this research, I’m interested in when alcohol began to be understood as a carcinogen, and the way this has been accepted and contested ever since, by both experts and the public. The persistence of notions of safe or responsible drinking, even as alcohol is framed as a risk, presents a clear challenge to public policy that seeks to reduce alcohol-related cancers,” Dr Allen says.
Dr Allen will contribute a book-length study on the history of alcohol and public health, focusing on the way alcohol has been represented as healthy or unhealthy, and how these messages from both health agencies and the alcohol industry have been received by the public.
By highlighting attitudes, industry pressures and responses, public health campaigns and education efforts over time, this research should uncover gaps and future opportunities.
Overall, the historical study of cancer should help inform and empower people and societies.
“The research should highlight that we actually have choices about the way cancer is funded and managed as a society and as individuals,” Dr Allen says.
The Australian Cancer Journey in Historical Perspective, 1925-2025 is led by Professor Andrew May (University of Melbourne) with 19 investigators from 18 organisations, including 6 universities and state and federal cancer councils as partner organisations.
Historical image in main picture: illustrative image of a 'drunkard's liver' from an early twentieth-century text that drew connections between alcohol and cancers of the liver. Source: 'Drunkard's Liver' in: Sir Victor Horsley and Mary D. Sturge, Alcohol and the Human Body …, (Macmillan & Co.: London, 1908), Plate XIII.
