The Studies in History and Society group conducts research that challenges and engages with social structures of race, class and gender. 

Members of this group actively research historical origins and contemporary consequences of migration, social inequality and structures of power in the west of Melbourne, Australia, and internationally. We use the disciplines of history, sociology, politics, peace studies. 

Research areas

  • Histories of violence, gender and ethnicity
  • Social and cultural modernisation
  • Social and political action
  • Social inclusion
  • Peace studies

Research projects

Read about our research into history and society.

  • Histories of the Irish and race in Australia
  • Children and war in history
  • Gender, violence and and the Irish
  • Social and cultural modernisation in South Asia
  • Life narrative and testimonial practices as forms of social and political action
  • Streets Beneath Our Feet: social and historical geography of urban areas
  • Transition to independence in East Timor
  • Regional disarmament
  • Cold War activists in Australia and the United States

  • Forging an identity on central Victoria’s colonial landscape: Patrick Cooke and the Irish influence, 1845-1903
  • Calling all Women: History, Memory and Legacy in the Work of the Suffragette Fellowship
  • Public Toilets and Moral Panics in Melbourne, 1960-2016
  • Out of the Main Stream: Spaniards Migration to Colonial Australia
  • The Impact of Australian Multicultural Policy on the Horn of Africa Muslim, Communities in Melbourne
  • Exploring African-Australian Student's Cultural Identity as a Barrier to Their Schooling Engagement
  • Erasure of the native mother: women and their children of mixed European heritage during Portuguese and Dutch intrusions in Ceylon
  • Social change for women workers in garment factories in rural Vietnam
  • Migrant Arab Women: Negotiating memory and creating belonging in diaspora
  • Women's Work: An Organisational Study of the Union of Australian Women, 1950-1970
  • Peace Activism in the Cold War: The Congress for International Cooperation & Disarmament, 1949-1970
  • Comparative Study of the Migrant experience in Melbourne, Australia of Irish immigrants from Dublin 1840-1855, Italian immigrants from Trieste 1954-1965
  • A home away from home: being Palestinian in the digital world
  • A business history of the street public transport systems of colonial Melbourne

Researchers

Find out who's in our team, and read our researcher biographies via the links.

  • Professor Phillip Deery
  • Dr Chris McConville
  • Dr Dunia El-Badaoui
  • Professor Micheal Hamel-Green
  • Associate Professor Julie Stephens
  • Dr John Tully
  • Dr Helen Hill
  • Dr Charlotte Fabiansson

Partners, funders & collaborators

Members of the group collaborate with a variety of university, government community partners locally, nationally and internationally. These include:

  • University of Adelaide
  • University of Melbourne
  • Queensland University
  • Australian Research Council
  • Univeristy of the South Pacific
  • National University of East Timor
  • National University of Ireland.