Next July, the Australasian Association for European History (AAEH) conference is being held at the University of Auckland. My abstract having been accepted, it looks like I’ll be going to New Zealand! My presentation is entitled ‘Civil defence from below: street patrols and air raid risk in Britain, 1915-1918’ and here’s what it’s about: As […]
CALL FOR PAPERS EXTENDEDNew Deadline: 13th March 2022Aviation Cultures Mk.VI: Connecting the Regions Didn’t have time to get your proposal in? Don’t worry! We are excited by the submissions we have received and invite others – experts, professionals, academics, and practitioners – to discuss the impact aviation has had throughout the regions at the local and global level. The Aviation Cultures Mk.VI
[Edited version of an oral summary of ‘Mutual aid in an air-raid? Community civil defence in Britain, 1914-18’, International Society for First World War Studies Virtual Conference 2021: Technology, online, 16-18 September 2021.] The first thing to note is that the German air raids on Britain of the First World War were much smaller in
A few weeks back I previewed my cohosting of the 1943 Disney film Victory Through Air Power for History at the Movies Australia and Aviation Cultures Mk.V. Both the conference and the livetweeting went splendidly (I think!), but I didn’t get around to lazyblogging the latter… until now. The evening began with the half-hour short
Back in the depths of last winter (and the great Melbourne pandemic lockdown of 2020) I had great fun as the co-host for the Historians at the Movies Australia (#HATMAus) livetweet of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going to be doing it again, this time along with James Kightly and Daniel
DUE DATE: FRIDAY 15 JANUARY 2021 Aviation Cultures Mk.V is an online conference for researchers, practitioners and curators to come together to share their knowledge of and ideas about aviation, and its place in history and society. The conference will take place online between 25 and 28 March 2021 and will align with the centenaries
On Wednesday, 27 May 2020, I was privileged to give a seminar to the Contemporary Histories Research Group at Deakin University on my aerial theatre research — via Zoom, as is the current fashion. I really enjoyed giving it, and I think it was a great success (and thanks to everyone who listened in and
From the climactic set-piece at the 1927 RAF Display at Hendon, the destruction of an ‘Eastern village’ by Fairey Foxes — in GIF form:
It is sometimes1 claimed that ballooning was an event at the 1900 Paris Olympics. I don’t think it can have been. But it’s genuinely a bit murky, because this was only the second modern Olympics and the planning process evidently was not as formalised as it later became. The Olympics were held that year as
In two weeks from today I’ll be leaving Armidale for good, and heading back to Melbourne, my hometown. It’s mostly for excellent personal reasons, but in part it’s also because of the usual early-career academic story of precarious employment. My colleagues at the University of New England have supported me as much they could, but
