Skip to Content

Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations

Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley

ARC 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 administer the Australian Media History database and listserv. I am a member of the Concentration of Research Excellence in Social, Cultural and Political Change and the President of the Macquarie University Library Friends Foundation. I also serve on the Library Council of NSW, the editorial boards of Media International Australia, Media History, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and the NSW Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Research

Current Research Projects
  • I am editing and contributing to A Companion to the Australian Media and co-ordinating the Media Archives Project.
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
  • Research Infrastructure Block Grant, Macquarie University, for Media Archives Project ($78,037) with Dr Michelle Arrow, Dr Kate Gleeson and Professor Murray Goot, 2011.
  • 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.

back to top

Current HDR students

Liz Gould, Open-line? A history of commercial talkback radio in Australia.
Tom D. C. Roberts, A Girdle Round About the Earth: A biographical reappraisal of the life and career of Sir Keith Murdoch.
Margaret Van Heekeren, The dissemination of New Idealist thought in Australian print and radio media from 1885 to 1945.
Madeleine Hastie, A history of free-to-air commercial television in Sydney since 1956.

back to top

Selected Publications

Monographs

 

Party gamesChanging Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009.

Shortlisted for Blake Dawson Prize for Business Literature, and longlisted for Walkley Book Award.

 

 

 

 

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
  • Reaching Out or Going Down?: The History of Tabloids, special issue of Australian Journal of Communication, vol. 38, no. 2, September 2011.
  • 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
  • ‘Digging up the past: Frank Clune, Australian historian and multi-media personality’, History Australia, vol. 8, no. 1, April 2011, pp. 127-50.
  • ‘Voices of the people: Audience participation in Australian radio’, Media International Australia, no. 137, November 2010, pp. 5-19.
  • ‘Australian commercial radio, American influences – and the BBC’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 30, no. 3, 2010, pp. 337-55.
  • ‘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.
    ‘“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, pp. 8.1-8.19.
  • ‘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, eds Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2nd edn, 2006, pp. 133-53; 3rd edn, 2010, pp. 113-131
  • 'The Steven Seagal factor: The corporate histories', in The Fuss That Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blaine, 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.

back to top

Teaching

Postgraduate:

back to top

Administration

  • Director, Centre for Media History, Faculty of Arts
  • Library Council of New South Wales (statutory appointment)
  • President, Macquarie University Library Friends Foundation
Committees
  • Research Projects Panel, Macquarie University
  • Research committee, Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations
  • Research Committee, Faculty of Arts
  • Chair, Strategic Research Initiatives Committee, Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations
Conferences
  • International Auto/Biography Association Conference, ANU, seminar convenor on Media and Biography, 2012.
  • Co-convenor, Reaching Out or Going Down? The History of Tabloids Workshop, Macquarie University, 24 September 2010.
  • Co-convenor, Histories of Australian Media Reception Colloquium, State Library of NSW, 26 September 2008.
  • Convenor, Western Australian Media Histories Workshop, State Library of WA, 13 June 2008.
  • Co-convenor, Duncan Waterson Festschrift, University of Technology, Sydney, 16-17 February 2001.
  • Co-convenor of Australian Media Traditions: Historical Perspectives Conference, State Library of New South Wales, 1999.

back to top

Go To

Staff List

 

Exercitationem

Visi ut aliquid ex

Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur.

Visi ut aliquid ex

Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatu

Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.