New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies
Education & Explainer
About
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies
Episodes
- Mia Martin Hobbs, Carolyn Holbrook, and Joan Beaumont, "Challenging Anzac: Stories That Don't Fit the Legend" (NewSouth, 2026)
Challenging Anzac: Stories that don’t fit the legend Edited by Mia Martin Hobbs , Carolyn Holbrook , and Joan Beaumont The Anzac legend has shaped Australia’s national identity for more than a century. Yet many experiences of war do not fi…
- Indigenous Employment and Cultural Safety: Building Real Pathways with guest Craig Seinor-Davies
*Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this episode may contain the name of deceased persons.* Podcast description: In the final episode of our first season, we sit down with Craig Seinor-Davies about what it me…
- The (Un)imagined Work of Linguistic Inclusion
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with PhD candidate Brynn Quick (Macquarie University, Australia) about her 2025 paper, The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency .…
- Decolonising Colonial Collections: Repatriation and Cultural Competence in Museums with guest Marika Duczynski
The Cultural Competence Collective welcomes Marika Duczynski onto the podcast to discuss cultural competence, decolonial practices, and community-led curation. Marika is a Gamilaraay and Mandandanji writer and curator and is the Indigenous…
- Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, "Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy. Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it and causing it. Wool's strategic value in wartime, a position it gained over ce…
- Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission
In this episode of Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah talks to Dr. Laura Rademaker (Australian National University), the author of Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission . The conversation explores the…
- Helen Garner Hacking Away at the Adverbs: A Novel Dialogue Crossover Conversation
In this RTB and Novel Dialogue episode from 2021, Helen Garner sits down with John and Elizabeth McMahon , a distinguished scholar of Australian literature. Helen’s novels range from the anti-patriarchy exuberance of Monkey Grip (1977) to…
- Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman, "The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation" (Bridget Williams Books, 2024)
What do the economics of decolonisation mean for the future of Aotearoa? This question drives the work of Dr. Matthew Scobie and Dr. Anna Sturman as they explore the complex relationship between tangata whenua and capitalism in The Economi…
- Joanna Siekiera, "International Law and Security in Indo-Pacific: Strategic Design for the Region" (Routledge, 2025)
International Law and Security in Indo-Pacific: Strategic Design for the Region (Routledge, 2025) edited by Dr. Joanna Siekiera uses an interdisciplinary approach to discuss international law and conflict in the Indo-Pacific region, coveri…
- Charlotte Macdonald, "Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and across the British Empire" (Bridget Williams Books, 2025)
The pivotal year of 1870 brought down the curtain on the redcoat garrison world at both the metropolitan and colonial ends of the empire . . . In fewer than forty years, less than a lifetime, Aotearoa had gone from being a Māori world in w…
- Aaron Smale, "Tairāwhiti: Pine, Profit and the Cyclone" (Bridget Williams, 2024)
"The Coast has been battered for years by decisions made by those who don’t live there and don’t have any connection to the place. It started early." Based on his investigative Newsroom series, Aaron Smale’s Tairāwhiti: Pine, Profit and th…
- Stephen D. Hopper, "Eucalyptus" (Reaktion, 2025)
Eucalypts, iconic to Australia, have shaped art, science and landscapes worldwide. With around nine hundred species, from towering giants to compact mallees, these trees inspire awe and curiosity. Their hardwood has driven industries, spar…
- Australia‘s National Indigenous Languages Survey
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast , Dr Alexandra Grey speaks with Zoe Avery, a Worimi woman and a Research Officer at the Centre for Australian Languages within the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Is…
- Jessica Urwin, "Contaminated Country: Nuclear Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia" (U of Washington Press, 2025)
Though a nonnuclear state, Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear energy programs of numerous global powers across the twentieth century. From uranium extraction to nuclear testing, Australia’s lands became sites of i…
- Zachary Gorman, "The Menzies Watershed: Liberalism, Anti-Communism, Continuities 1943-1954" (Melbourne UP, 2023)
The eleven years that passed between the 1943 and the 1954 elections were arguably some of the most pivotal in Australian history. This was a period of intense political, policy and strategic transition, which saw a popular Labor Governmen…
- Michelle De Kretser, "Theory & Practice" (Catapult, 2025)
Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Australia on unceded Gadigal land. She writes fiction but has also published a short book about Shirley Hazzard's work. Theory & Practice , her seventh novel, recently won Australia's…
- Nicholas Thomas, "Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific" (Apollo, 2020)
In Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (Apollo, 2020), the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas tells the story of the peopling of the Pacific. In clear, accessible language Thomas shows us that most Pacific Islanders are in fa…
- Zachary Gorman, "The Young Menzies: Success, Failure, Resilience 1894-1942" (Melbourne UP, 2022)
Sir Robert Menzies is a towering figure in Australian history. The Young Menzies: Success, Failure, Resilience 1894-1942 (Melbourne UP, 2022) explores the formative period of Menzies' life, when his personal outlook and system of beliefs t…
- Matthew Allen, "Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
The nineteenth-century spread of democracy in Britain and its colonies coincided with an increase in alcohol consumption and in celebratory public dinners with rounds of toasts. British colonists raised their glasses to salute the Crown in…
- Is Beach Safety Signage Fit For Purpose?
We often take the meaning of signs for granted but that's far from the case in a linguistically and culturally diverse society. The instruction to "Swim between the flags!" can be interpreted in multiple ways - some of which may actually h…
- Stuart Ward, "Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Professor Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishnes…
- Georgina Banks, "Back to Bangka: Searching for the Truth about a Wartime Massacre" (Viking Australia, 2023)
Georgina Banks searches for the truth of what happened to her Great Aunt ‘Bud’, killed in the Second World War. Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942 . Allied ships are evacuating thousands in flight from Singapore, the island having fallen to Ja…
- Tuomas Tammisto, "Hard Work: Producing Places, Relations and Value on a Papua New Guinea Resource Frontier" (Helsinki UP, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by socio-cultural anthropologist, Tuomas Tammisto, who is an academy research fellow in Social Anthropology at Tampere University. Tuomas is joining me to talk about his recently published book, Hard Work:…
- Philip Harling, "Managing Mobility: The British Imperial State and Global Migration, 1840-1860" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Between 1840 and 1860 the British Empire expanded rapidly in scale, with rampant annexation of territory and ruthless suppression of rebellion. These decades also witnessed an unprecedented movement of people across the Empire and around t…
- Teaching International Students in Australia
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr Agi Bodis and Dr Jing Fang about international tertiary students in Australia. They discuss how these students can make connections between their university ex…
- Tom Lynch, "Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
People make sense of the world through stories, and stories about places inevitably shape how we treat, live on, and use those places. In Outback and Out West: The Settler Colonial Environmental Imaginary (U Nebraska Press, 2022), emeritus…
- David Oakeshott, "Schooling, Conflict and Peace in the Southwestern Pacific: Becoming Enemy Friends" (Bristol UP, 2024)
Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, Schooling, Conflict and Peace in the Southwestern Pacific: Becoming Enemy Friends (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. David Oakeshott…
- Royce Kurmelovs, "Slick: Australia's Toxic Relationship with Big Oil" (U Queensland Press, 2024)
A riveting expose of the global oil industry' s multi-decade conspiracy to muddy the waters around the science of climate change and use the Australian government to undermine worldwide efforts to address environmental devastation. Researc…
- Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell, "Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene" (Routledge, 2024)
Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature: Unsettling the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2024) presents an innovative and imaginative reading of contemporary Australian literature in the context of unprecedented ecological cris…
- David R. Saunders, "Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965" (Cornell UP, 2024)
In Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965 (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. David R. Saunders demonstrates that the withdrawal of the British imperial state from Sabah…
- Angela Wanhalla et al., "Te Hau Kainga: The Maori Home Front during the Second World War" (Auckland UP, 2024)
Taking readers to the farms and factories, the marae and churches where Māori lived, worked and raised their families, Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori Home Front during the Second World War (Auckland University Press, 2024) by Dr. Angela Wanhalla…
- Yves Rees, "Travelling to Tomorrow: How Australia's Modern Women Pioneered Our Romance with the United States" (New South, 2024)
A celebrity decorator with blue hair. A single mother who advised JFK in the Oval Office. A Christian nudist with a passion for almond milk. As explored by Dr. Yves Rees in Travelling to Tomorrow: The Modern Women Who Sparked Australia’s R…
- Melissa Johnston, "Building Peace, Rebuilding Patriarchy: The Failure of Gender Interventions in Timor-Leste" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Over the two decades since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, peacebuilding interventions around the globe have increasingly incorporated gender perspectives. These initiatives hav…
- Creaky Voice in Australian English
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Hannah White , a Postdoc researcher at Macquarie University in the Department of Linguistics. She completed her doctoral research in 2023 with a thesis entitl…
- Investing in Southeast Asia: Key insights for Australian Researchers
Southeast Asia is of vital importance to Australia. As a nation, Australia’s prosperity, security and economic future are intimately connected to the region. According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, Southeast Asia is expe…
- Supporting Multilingual Families to Engage with their Children’s Schooling
How can school communications become more accessible to multilingual families? In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast, Dr Agnes Bodis talks to Professor Margaret Kettle about the Multilingual Glossary of School-based Terms . T…
- Sarah Ball, "Behavioural Public Policy in Australia: How an Idea Became Practice" (Routledge, 2022)
Max Weber once remarked that bureaucracy’s power comes from its massing of expert and factual knowledges. It amasses this power, in part, by keeping much of its expertise and factual knowledge from public view. Only occasionally does someo…
- Jane Lydon, "Anti-Slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land?" (Routledge, 2021)
Bringing the histories of British anti-slavery and Australian colonization together changes our view of both. Anti-Slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land? (Routledge, 2021) explores the anti-slavery movement in imperial scope, ar…
- Gary Mucciaroni, "Answers to the Labour Question: Industrial Relations and the State in the Anglophone World, 1880–1945" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
Since the mid-nineteenth century, public officials, reformers, journalists, and other elites have referred to “the labour question.” The labour question was rooted in the system of wage labour that spread throughout much of Europe and its…
- Karen Patel, "Craft as a Creative Industry" (Routledge, 2024)
How can we diversify the creative industries? In Craft as a Creative Industry (Routledge, 2024), Karen Patel, an Associate Professor in Media and Director of the Centre for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts (CEDIA) at Birmingha…
- The Dragon and the Nguzunguzu
Nguzunguzu is the traditional figurehead which was formerly affixed to canoes in the Solomon Islands. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Rodolfo Maggio, a senior researcher at the University of Helsinki about his book project on t…
- Mavis Kerinaiua and Laura Rademaker, "Tiwi Story: Turning History Downside Up" (NewSouth, 2023)
Tiwi Story: Turning History Downside Up (New SouthPress, 2023) is a groundbreaking work of history that spans from Deep Time to the present. Applying a range of historical methodologies, it centres Tiwi oral histories and visits key episod…
- Ebony Nilsson, "Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Ebony Nilsson explores the lives of left-wing Soviet refugees who fled the Cold War to settle in Australia, and uncovers ho…
- Alfred Peredo Flores, "Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962" (Cornell UP, 2023)
In Tip of the Spear: Land, Labor, and US Settler Militarism in Guåhan, 1944–1962 (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Alfred Peredo Flores argues that the US occupation of the island of Guåhan (Guam), one of the most heavily militarised i…
- Joanna Siekiera, "21st Century as the Pacific Century: Culture and Security of Oceania States in Great Power Competition" (Warsaw UP, 2023)
With the ever-greater shift of the balance of global power towards the Pacific region, what does this have implications for the geopolitics of the region? How should the rest of the world, especially Europe, address the growing power and i…
- Hannah Forsyth, "Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World, 1870–2008" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World, 1870–2008 (Cambridge UP, 2023) explores the rise of the professional middle class across the Anglophone world from c. 1870 to 2008. With a focus on Br…
- John Blaxland and Clare Birgin, "Revealing Secrets: An Unofficial History of Australian Signals Intelligence and the Advent of Cyber" (UNSW Press, 2023)
Why does Australia have a national signals intelligence agency? What does it do and why is it controversial? And how significant are its ties with key partners, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, to this arrange…
- Lifestyle and Death with Christopher Mayes
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Christopher Mayes. Dr Mayes is an interdisciplinary scholar with backgrounds in sociology, history and philosophy. His research interests include history and philosophy of healthcare, sociology of health…
- Cian T. McMahon, "The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine" (NYU Press, 2021)
Cian T. McMahon is an associate professor of history at University of Nevada-Las Vegas. His research focuses on the history and identity of the Irish Diaspora. In this interview, he discusses his new book The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at…
- Martin Dusinberre, "Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
In Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories (Cambridge UP, 2023), Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship across Asian and Pacific waters in an innovative history of Japan's engagement with the o…