Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University
Frank Bongiorno (born Nhill, Victoria, 1969) is an Australian labour, political and cultural historian. Prior to joining the Australian National University, he held lecturing positions at King’s College London (2007-11), the University of New England (2000-07) and Griffith University (1996), and also taught previously at the ANU (1994). He has been an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the ANU (1997 and 1998-2000), and in 1997-8 was Smuts Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge and Mellon Visiting Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He has worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Frank is the author or co-author of four books and many articles and book chapters on Australian history. The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (Black Inc., 2012), won the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Book of the Year and was shortlisted in the Australian History category of the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the New South Wales Premier’s History Award. His most recent book, The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (Black Inc., 2015), was shortlisted for the Ernest Scott Prize, the New South Wales Premier’s History Award and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Book Award, and won ACT Book of the Year.
He has served on the New South Wales Arts Advisory Council and as a member of the New South Wales Ministry of the Arts Literature and History Committee, including as its chair for three years. He is an Editorial Board member of Labour History, Journal of Australian Studies, the Australian Journal of Politics and History, and History Australia, and was co-editor of History Australia from 2013 until 2015. Frank is also a member of the National Archives of Australia’s Canberra Consultative Forum.
Frank is President of the Canberra and Region Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH) and a member of the National Executive of the ASSLH.
Are we learning the wrong lessons from history?
Jul 04, 2022 16:27 pm UTC| Insights & Views
Can historians influence government policy? Should they? And, if so, what kinds of historical knowledge should they produce? I suspect policy-makers only rarely think of historians as a first port of call when seeking...
How the pandemic has brought out the worst — and the best — in Australians and their governments
Jun 07, 2021 09:30 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
For many years, surveys indicated declining Australian trust in government. Not anymore. On the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, which measures average trust in NGOs, business, government and the media, trust in Australia...
A Shorten government could shift the country on important issues and show a little spunk
Feb 26, 2019 14:55 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series...
Your time starts now: how leadership instability and revenge became woven into our political fabric
Aug 21, 2018 16:05 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
Back in 2012, a major study on the selection and removal of party leaders in Anglo parliamentary democracies was published. The book contained a section with the inviting title of Machiavellian tactics. Most of the authors...
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