Join acclaimed writer Steven Carroll, winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Award, and ABC radio presenter Louise Maher as they discuss Carroll’s latest novel, Forever Young. Forever Young is set against the tumultuous period of change and uncertainty that was Australia in 1977.

Join Marjory Harper, Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen, to explore the history of the Scots in Australia.

This talk explores narratives of adventure and exile in Scottish emigration to Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining the participants’ motives, the different ways they came to Australia, and the consequences of their relocation.

Professor Joan Beaumont is an internationally recognised historian of Australia of the two world wars, Australian defence policy, and heritage of war. Her presentation reflects on the publications and interpretations of the First World War, and whether Australia’s Great War historiography is too narrow, neglecting some of the writers, individuals and battles.

Dr Ann Vickery is senior lecturer in Literary Studies at Deakin University. She is the author of Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry (2007). Vickery discusses the role of women responding and commenting on the First World War and their instrumentality in public debate.

Dr Philip Butterss studied at the University of Sydney where he studied Early English literature, Middle Welsh, and a PhD on Australian ballads. His recent book, An Unsentimental Bloke: The Life and Work of C.J. Dennis (2014), explores the poet’s imagining of Australian identity and influence on the Anzac legend. He discusses how the ending of C.J. Dennis’s The Moods of Ginger Mick, launched in October 1916, could be seen as its author’s attempts to find the narrative shape to tell the story of Gallipoli during the legend’s first slippery year.

Dr Adrian Caesar has held various appointments at Australian universities including the ANU and UNSW@ADFA, where he taught courses in English and Australian war literature. Caesar discusses his research on the war cemeteries of the Western Front which contributed to his latest novel, The Blessing, set in the First World War. It is due for publication in Spring 2015.

Dr Clare Rhoden is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne. In The Purpose of Futility (2015), she surveys Australian Great War narratives, demonstrating their particularly Australian features which help to explain the unique and disputed position of the Great War in Australian history. She discusses the polarity of Australian perspectives of its involvement in the First World War: the myth of the heroic young nation proving itself, and this concepts link to militarism, or obedience to British Empire demands, and links to a disenchantment myth.

Malcolm St Hill is a poetry editor and independent researcher focused on the literature of the First World War, and discusses how Australian Great War poetry is often overlooked as a pillar of Great War memory that should sit alongside film, fiction and memoirs. St Hill discusses the contribution Australians made, particularly the combatants and the soldier poets to this fundamental artistic endeavour of war poetry.

Historian and biographer Dr Ross McMullin has researched and written extensively about Australia’s involvement in World War I. His biography of the famous Australian commander, Pompey Elliott, won awards for literature and biography, and discusses his significant and compelling leadership and on the Western Front, making him the most revered and famous Australian fighting commander, with a great command of words.

Dr Janet Butler is an honorary research associate in the History Program at La Trobe University. She discusses Kit McNaughton’s daily diary, exploring how it reveals Kitty’s life in process, not only what her experiences were, but also the changes in her ideas about herself and her world in response to them. Her book, Kitty’s War, based on the diaries of First World War army nurse Kitty McNaughton, was awarded the 2013 New South Wales Premier’s History Prize for Australian History.