My research focuses primarily on the oral testimony conducted over several years of Australian WWII war brides who married American servicemen during and just after the war and who went to America to live. Drawing on taped interviews and questionnaires my study investigates the experiences of these women who grew up in the aftermath of WWI and during the Great Depression. Between 10,000 and 15,000 young Australian women married Americans and left their families and friends to follow their hearts to a new country to join their husbands and fiancés in locations sometimes very different to their home towns. In transplanting their lives across the Pacific, these women left behind everything familiar to them, and they had to deal with homesickness, and adjust to living in a new land with a different culture.

This study looks at certain aspects of the 'war-bride experience' by focusing on their meetings, courtships and marriages; the long wait to join their husbands and fiancés in America; the sea voyage across the Pacific; their arrival in America and the reception by their husbands and in-laws; adjustment to life in America; taking up American citizenship; links with Australia; and the importance of these women's contribution to Australian-American relations.

War-time myths and stereotypes regarding Australian WWII war brides are challenged, and by drawing on the oral testimony of these women, their personal stories told from their own perspectives and articulated in their own voices, highlight for the first time what it was really like to be the bride of an American serviceman in a time of social upheaval, and gives insight into the challenges and difficulties they faced with courage and determination.

Publications
A danger greater than war: NSW and the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic/Arrowsmith, Robyn
ISBN9780975787359 (Pbk)

Matt's research looks at Australian retail history from the mid-1950s to the present, and specifically the emergence and development of large-scale, internalised shopping centres in Sydney . It explores the history behind this retail form; the planning and development of major centres; the interaction between developers and different levels of government; the impact of large centres on local trade and small shopkeepers; the experiences of shoppers within shopping centres; and the broader social and cultural implications of such retail development.

Case studies are used from around Sydney to trace the pattern of development over the past fifty years and to explore the themes outlined above. In addition, an oral history component to the project draws upon the experiences of shoppers and retailers to investigate the impact of centres on small retail and suburban communities.

My thesis concentrates on the experiences of two groups of evacuees who came to Australia during World War II – British woman and children from Hong Kong (1940) and Singapore (1941 – 1942).

I will be looking at their lives prior to evacuation, as members of expatriate white communities, including their involvement in the British imperial war effort. After tracing their evacuation from Hong Kong and Singapore, my investigation will include how they coped with the dislocation from their homes and husbands, and whether their colonial mentality changed as a result of this. Additionally I will look at the role of the Commonwealth Government of Australia and the governments of the individual States in providing assistance to evacuees from Hong Kong and Singapore and also help given by voluntary groups such as the Red Cross, Travellers’ Aid Society and YWCA. Cooperation between the British Government, colonial administrations and Commonwealth Government in regard to the evacuees will be discussed, as well as how the evacuees helped themselves, for example by setting up their own support groups.

From a historiographical aspect, my main aim is to place the experiences of these evacuees back into the narrative of the Second World War. British civilians during World War II have been written about from the home front perspective in Britain and recognition has been given to those interned in South East Asia, whether as POWs or civilians, and rightly so, as the ordeal that they went through should be acknowledged and recorded. Yet, I think that the story of the ‘ones that got away’ also need to be told as this will add to our understanding of how the war affected British subjects, in this case women, domiciled outside Great Britain. Additionally, it will add another dimension to Australia’s role in World War Two, on the home front.

My research has focused on the nature and origins of the Indigenous images and character stereotypes that emerged in Australian cinema from the earliest days of silent film. To date the literature has addressed Aboriginality in film from the 1950s to the 21st century, without serious consideration of the genesis of those images during the prolific and dynamic era of Australian silent film. The research therefore is designed to address a significant gap in the study of Aboriginality in film.

Although there have been sections in books on Australian feature films devoted to Indigenous Australians there has been no single, comprehensive study. The silent films of the early twentieth century in particular has been neglected and /or forgotten. There have been essays and journal articles, addressing film, Aboriginality and history, and although these have been more frequent of late, there is still no Australian publication to compare with works on the Native American or African American cinematic representations of another settler society, the United States.

In terms of the strong American influence on Australian filmmakers, the 'accepted wisdom' has been inclined to privilege analogies between the cinematic modes of representation of Native Americans and Indigenous Australians, a strong case however is emerging from my research for the value of comparisons between African Americans and Indigenous Australians.

The history of Australia's cinematic representation of Aboriginality reveals a series of familiar character stereotypes ranging from the noble savage, to the mystic other, to the tracker, among others. Although some of these character types are explored in the current literature, I am developing a more comprehensive character typology that can be fruitfully employed to explore the origins of key aspects of our cinematic representation of Aboriginality.

The success of the revolution in Russia that installed a Communist Government seemed to many in Australia and elsewhere, to offer an alternative system of government more responsive to the needs of ordinary people. It was a system perceived to offer a release from capitalist oppression through action by a revolutionary proletariat. The Depression of the 1930s and 40s was seen as the final crisis of capitalism and the Communist Party in Australia the means to deliver the final blow. Party membership grew rapidly during the 1930s and 40s as the Communists claimed that they truly represented the workers and the large number of unemployed but membership fell rapidly in the 1950s.

This research is aimed at reaching a clearer understanding of why so many people embraced Communism only later to reject it. Reasons for the rejection are expected to go beyond the crises in Czechoslovakia and the uprising in Hungary and Kruschev’s denunciation of Stalin, often given as reasons for people leaving the Party. While these alone are regarded as reason enough it is proposed that it has more to do with the failure of the idea. This is the focus of the research; it is not a history of the Communist Party of Australia.

The power and influence of the anti-communist propaganda and where it came from will be assessed for its effect and a brief look at Canada’s experience will enable a comparison to be made to see if there was anything different about Australia’s brush with communism.

This different approach will give those people who at the time genuinely believed Marx’s system preferable to a capitalist one the opportunity to say why. When viewed in the environment of the time perhaps then our understanding of that part of our history becomes more complete. That would be the ideal outcome of this research.

My project examines the reception and philosophy of Jacques Derrida, in particular among historians and philosophers of history in the US .  It follows two main threads; firstly, the way in which Derrida's work is interacted with in key debates among historians and theorists concerning narrative and representation, ethics and politics, and the methodology of historians; secondly, tracing the various points of Derrida's philosophy that touch upon the philosophy of history, the archive, memory and time.  This research examines the dynamics of the discipline of history, the way historians respond to philosophical challenges, and incorporate theoretical aspects from other disciplines. 

The aim of this thesis is to investigate early settler emotive and ideological responses to, and interactions with, the Australian environment. It is an exploration of the processes whereby geography is historically enriched to become homeland.

After writing my MA thesis at UCL in London , I joined the department in October 2007 to do a PhD.

The working title of my thesis is "Observing the Birth of a Nation" and it explores the construction of Australia and its people in British travel writing between 1870 and 1939. The main emphasis is on how imperial identity is played out in these accounts and how this is affected by the development towards and after the federation. I am supervised by Dr Hsu-Ming Teo as primary supervisor, and Prof. Angela Woollacott as secondary supervisor.

My general areas of interest are travel writing, imperialism/colonialism, gender, discourse theory and postcolonial theory.

My thesis focuses on American responses to popular films in the early to mid-1980s. It involves an examination of how people reacted to themes of nuclear war, anti-Communism, militarism and patriotism in films. Whilst not concentrating solely on the film texts themselves, textual analysis forms some part of this study. More significant is the interpretation of how the public reacted to these textual themes, and the context in which themes were both produced and assimilated by audiences.

Publications
Harvey, K. " Vietnam Veterans, Hollywood , and the Persian Gulf War." When the Soldiers Return Conference Proceedings ( Melbourne : RMIT Press, 2008). Forthcoming.

Conference papers
"Better Dead Than Red? Film Reception and the Soviet 'Threat' in the Age of Reagan." Paper to be presented at the biennial Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference , University of Sydney , July 2008. Paper has been accepted.

Teaching duties
HIST 115: Introduction to World History (Semester 1, 2008)

The thesis will research British/Australian relations, specifically the interaction between Britain and New South Wales, over the period 1891-1914, with emphasis on the Governors' involvement. It was a transitional era for the Colony from unfettered access to the Colonial Office to giving up some of its sovereign rights to the new Commonwealth that embraced all the Australian colonies. Consequently, the State Governor after Federation could feel that he had been relegated to a less prestigious role compared to his colonial predecessors. The Governors provide the continuous frontline link throughout this whole period and a basis for assessment of what was achieved from the British point of view. The competing priority of issues for the Mother Country and this Colony/State will be examined and how the Governor conducted his intermediary role.

Australians have been living with an El Niño climate for tens of thousands of years. However, the spectre of climate change has sharpened apprehension about how 21 st century Australia will cope with extreme droughts and floods. This thesis examines attitudes to the natural environment during ENSO events in NSW from 1880 to 1980 with a view to understanding how our construction of nature impacts on land management practices.

This thesis explores how world history texts written for children or'youth,' reflected changing understandings of education and moral order in nineteenth century Britain. By asking what does it mean to be 'educated'? Who is to be educated, by whom are they to be educated, how is this education to occur and to what ends and applying such knowledge in the examination of primary texts, we are able to gain a broader understanding of the cultural significance of world histories..