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Department of Modern History, Politics, International Relations

Associate Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley

Associate Professor Bridget Griffen-FoleyAssociate Professor Bridget Griffen-FoleyARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellow
BA, PhD (Macquarie University)

Office: W6A 415
Phone: +61 2 9850 8828
Fax: +61 2 9850 6594
Email: b.foley@mq.edu.au

 

Since completing my PhD thesis at Macquarie University in 1996, I have been specialising in the history of the Australian media. After holding postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Sydney, I returned to Macquarie University in 2003. I am the Director of the Centre for Media History, established at Macquarie University in 2007, and am the convenor of the ARC Cultural Research Network’s Media Histories node and the Australian Media History database and listserv. I also write a regular media column for Australian Book Review, and serve on the Library Council of NSW, the editorial board of Media International Australia and Media History, and the NSW Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Research

Current Research Projects

Changing Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio is to be published by UNSW Press in late 2009. I am now embarking upon the production of A Companion to the Australian Media.

Research

I specialise in media history and twentieth-century Australian history and biography, and am able to supervise in these areas.

Research Funding and fellowships
  • ARC Discovery Grant/Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship for From Print to the Internet: The Media in Australia since 1803 ($530 000), 2008-2012.
  • ARC Discovery Grant/Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship for a history of commercial radio in Australia ($556 565), 2003-2007.
  • New Staff Support Grant, Macquarie University, for a short history of the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters, 2004.
  • Research Development Grant, Macquarie University, for Towards a Companion to the Australian Media, 2006.
  • Research Infrastructure Block Grant, Macquarie University, for A Database of Public Opinion, Social Movements and the Media: A New Research Tool for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Macquarie University (with Professor Murray Goot and Dr Sean Scalmer), 2006.
  • Strategic Infrastructure Grant, Macquarie University, for A Media Reception Database and Facility, with Centre for Media History colleagues, 2008.

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Selected Publications

Monographs

Party gamesParty Games: Australian Politicians and the Media from War to Dismissal, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2003.

This book explored the nature of the relationship between Australian media companies, their proprietors, and politicians and political parties from 1945 to 1975.


 

 

Sir Frank PackerSir Frank Packer: The Young Master, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2000.

A portrait of the life and times of one of Australia 's most legendary, controversial and feared media barons.

 

 

 

 

 

The House of Packer: The Making of a Media EmpireThe House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999.

Based on my PhD thesis, this book constituted the first historical account of one of Australia's dominant media empires.

 

 

 

Edited
  • Australian Media Reception Histories, special issue of Media International Australia, no. 131, May 2009.
  • From the Frontier: Essays in Honour of Duncan Waterson, special joint issue of Journal of Australian Studies , no. 69 and Australian Cultural History , no. 20, 2001.
  • Australian Media History, special issue of Media International Australia, no. 99, May 2001.

 

Journal Articles
  • ‘Radio ministries: Religion on Australian commercial radio from the 1920s to the 1960s’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 32, no. 1, March 2008, pp. 31-54.
  • ‘Talkback radio and Australian politics since the summer of ’67’, Media International Australia, no. 122, February 2007, pp. 96-107.
  • ‘From the Murrumbidgee to Mamma Lena: Foreign-language broadcasting on Australian commercial radio, Part 2’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 90, 2007, pp. 77-87, 190-92.
  • ‘From the Murrumbidgee to Mamma Lena: Foreign-language broadcasting on Australian commercial radio, Part 1’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 88, 2006, pp. 51-60, 168-70.
  • ‘Sporting chances: Sport on Australian commercial radio from the 1920s to the 1950s’, Sporting Traditions, vol. 23, no. 1, 2006, pp. 37-62.
  • ‘Australian press, radio and television historiography: An update’, Media International Australia, no. 119, May 2006, pp. 21-37 (bibliographical essay).
  • ‘The birth of a hybrid: The shaping of the Australian radio industry’, The Radio Journal (UK), vol. 2, no. 3, 2004, pp. 153-69.
    Republished in Radio: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, vol. 2, ed. Andrew Crisell, Routledge, New York, 2008.
  • ‘“The Kangaroo is coming into its own”: R. G. Casey, Earl Newsom and public relations in the 1940s’, Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, December 2004 pp. 1-20.
  • ‘Midnight to dawn programs on Australian commercial radio’, Journal of Radio Studies (USA), vol. 11, no. 2, Winter 2004, pp. 239-53.
  • ‘From Tit-Bits to Big Brother: A century of audience participation in the media’, Media, Culture & Society (UK), vol. 26, no. 4, July 2004, pp. 533-48.
    Republished in The Tabloid Culture Reader, eds Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn, Open University Press, Maidenhead, England ; New York, 2007, pp. TBC.
    Republished in Media Audiences, eds Barrie Gunter and David Machin, SAGE Publications, June 2009 (forthcoming).
  • ‘“A civilised amateur”: Edgar Holt and his life in letters and politics’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 49, no. 1, March 2003, pp. 31-47.
  • ‘Political opinion polling and the professionalisation of public relations: Keith Murdoch, Robert Menzies and the Liberal Party of Australia’, Australian Journalism Review, vol. 24, no. 1, July 2002, pp. 41-59.
  • ‘The Fairfax, Murdoch and Packer dynasties in twentieth-century Australia’, Media History (UK), vol. 8, no. 1, 2002, pp. 89-102.
  • ‘“The crumbs are better than a feast elsewhere”: Australian journalists on Fleet Street’, Journalism History (USA), vol. 28, no. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 26-37.
    Republished in Australians in Britain: The Twentieth Century Experience, eds Carl Bridge, Robert Crawford and David Dunstan, Monash University ePress, Melbourne, 2009 (forthcoming).
  • ‘The battle of Melbourne: The rise and fall of the Star’, special joint issue of Journal of Australian Studies, no. 69 and Australian Cultural History, no. 20, 2001, pp. 89-102, 195-7.
  • ‘Sir Frank Packer and the leadership of the Liberal Party, 1967-71’, Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 36, no. 3, November 2001, pp. 499-513.
  • ‘The press proprietor and the politician: Sir Frank Packer and Sir Robert Menzies’, Media International Australia, no. 99, May 2001, pp. 23-34.
  • ‘Revisiting The “Mystery of a Novel Contest”: The Daily Telegraph and Come in Spinner’, Australian Literary Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, October 2000, pp. 413-24.
  • ‘Playing with princes and presidents: Sir Frank Packer and the 1962 challenge for the America’s Cup’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 46, no. 1, March 2000, pp. 51-66.
  • ‘Audience complicity and community in the Sydney press, 1933 to 1953’, Publishing Studies, no. 6, Autumn 1998, pp. 38-42.
  • ‘The Young Master and his old man: Frank and R. C. Packer’, Media International Australia, no. 77, August 1995, pp. 35-45.
  • ‘“Four more points than Moses”: Dr H. V. Evatt, the press and the 1944 referendum’, Labour History, no. 68, May 1995, pp. 63-79.
  • ‘“This thing of darkness”: Public representations of Dr H. V. Evatt’, Public History Review, no. 3, 1994, pp. 64-78.
  • ‘A biographical profile of George Warnecke’, Australian Studies in Journalism, no. 3, 1994, pp. 67-108.

 

Book Chapters
  • ‘In the wake of War: The rise and rise of Australia’s media since 1918’, Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, eds Deborah Gare and David Ritter, Thomson Learning, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 375-382.
  • ‘Modernity, intimacy and early Australian commercial radio’, in Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity: Essays on the History of Sound, eds Joy Damousi and Desley Deacon, ANU e-Press, Canberra, 2007, pp. 123-132: http://epress.anu.edu.au/tal_citation.html
  • ‘Packer’, The Oxford Companion to Australian Politics, eds Brian Galligan and Winsome Roberts, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2007, pp. 383-384.
  • ‘Packer publications’, in Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia, 1946-2001, eds Craig Munro and Robyn Sheehan-Bright, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2006, pp. 47-9.
  • 'Radio', in The Media and Communications in Australia, 2nd edition, eds Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner, Allen & Unwin, Sydney , 2006, pp. 133-53.
  • 'The Steven Seagal factor: The corporate histories', in The Fuss That Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey, eds Deborah Gare, Geoffrey Bolton, Stuart Macintyre and Tom Stannage, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003, pp. 79-89, 182-4.
  • 'The Evatts, liberalism and modernism', in Studies in Twentieth Century Australian History, ed. D. B. Waterson, Australian History Museum, Macquarie University, Sydney, 2001, pp. 58-71.
  • R. C. Packer: Founder of a dynasty', Australian Communication Lives 1999, eds Graeme Osborne and Deborah Jenkin, University of Canberra , Canberra , 2000, pp. 40-6.
  • 'Operating on "an intelligent level": Cadet training at Consolidated Press in the 1940s', in Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture, eds Ann Curthoys and Julianne Schultz, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1999, pp. 142-54, 328-9.

 

Teaching

Postgraduate:

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Administration

  • Director, Centre for Media History, Faculty of Arts
  • Media Histories node convenor, ARC Cultural Research Network
  • Library Council of New South Wales (statutory appointment)
  • President, Macquarie University Library Friends Foundation
Committees
  • Research committee, Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations
Conferences
  • Co-convenor of Australian Media Traditions: Historical Perspectives Conference, State Library of New South Wales, 1999.

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