Professor Emerita Joan Beaumont AM, FASSA is one of Australia’s foremost historians of the experience, memory and commemoration of war, as well as of Australian defence and foreign policy. This symposium will honour her distinguished career as a scholar and academic leader.
In a career spanning almost 50 years, Joan has not only expanded the boundaries of military history in Australia and filled a number of academic leadership positions, but been a generous and inspirational mentor for a new generation of Australian historians.
Joan’s work comprises over 70 publications in various forms including the ground-breaking Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity – a revised edition of which is soon to be published by NewSouth – the multi-award-winning Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War, and Australia’s Great Depression, which was described by one reviewer as a ‘magisterial study’.
In this symposium, jointly hosted by the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University and the Centre for Contemporary Histories at Deakin University, Joan’s peers and former students will gather to celebrate her long and influential career. In a series of original papers, they will reflect on her contribution to the historical profession both in Australia and internationally and present new research inspired by her work.
You can find an agenda for the day via this link.