Our Research

HPRC benefits from the expertise of an extensive list of honorary and emeritus staff many of whom contribute to post-graduate supervision.

The following short profiles of all current Professors and Associate Professors indicate the breadth and standing of research in the School:

• Professor Clive Moore
• Professor Peter Spearritt
• Professor Paul Turnbull
• Associate Professor Andrew Bonnell
• Associate Professor Deborah Brown
• Associate Professor Martin Crotty
• Associate Professor Chris Dixon
• Associate Professor Phil Dowe
• Associate Professor Richard Hutch
• Associate Professor William Grey
• Dr Chi-Kong Lai (Reader)
• Associate Professor Rick Strelan

Clive Moore is one of the leading scholars of Australia and the Pacific, specialising in the history of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the Melanesian diaspora as well as gay studies and masculinity in Australia. His scholarship saw him awarded the Cross of the Solomon Islands in 2005, and from 2006 to 2010 he was President of the peak body for Pacific Studies scholars in Australia.

Peter Spearritt's public history interests are reflected in the research projects of the Centre for the Government of Queensland, including Queensland Places and the ARC Linkage project, the Queensland Historical Atlas. He is the Chair of the University of Queensland Press Board and serves on committees for the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University.

Paul Turnbull's acclaimed South Seas web resource provides free on-line editions of the journals and the visual record of James Cook's first Pacific voyage, together with scholarly essays and commentaries. He has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar and currently sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Digital Corpus Project. Professor Turnbull is also known internationally for his research on the theft and scientific uses of Aboriginal bodily remains.

Andrew Bonnell is interested in Modern German and European history. Associate Professor Bonnell has written a number of books and articles and is the history editor for the Australian Journal of Politics and History

Deborah Brown was awarded an ARC Discovery Grant for her work on Descartes' Ontology of Everyday Life. Her publications have appeared in many leading philosophy journals, she is the Director of Undergraduate studies.

Martin Crotty has a range of publications about Australian history and has recently been involved on research on the History of Anzac Day.

Chris Dixon has published widely in the field of American history, with major monographs exploring the intersection of antebellum racial and gender reform, and African-American history from a trans-national perspective. He has served as President of the International Society for Cultural History, and is currently President of the Australian-New Zealand American Studies Association. Dixon is Convenor of the University's Cultural History Project.

Phil Dowe works on philosophy of science and metaphysics, and has a significant international reputation for his work on causation. According to Google Scholar, at 1/11/2010, his book Physical Causation has been cited more than 250 times. He has published in many of the world's top philosophy journals and has published books with Cambridge University Press, Routledge and Edinburgh University Press. He has often been invited to give keynotes at international conferences, for example at Waterloo Canada, Nottingham in the UK, Ghent in Belgium, Grenoble in France, Barcelona in Spain, Lake Tegernsee and Konstance in Germany, and Pittsburgh in USA. His work has been translated into Spanish, French, and Italian.

Richard Hutch has published widely in the field of the history and psychology of religions, with major monographs exploring the interface between religious experience in the life of the individual and its personal, social and cultural expressions in contemporary world history. He has published in many of the world's significant Studies in Religion journals.

William Grey has published extensively, in particular in metaphysics and applied ethics, notably in the fields of environmental ethics and bioethics. He has an international standing in environmental ethics, where he has made seminal contributions to the debate about the foundations of environmental value. He delivered keynote addresses to conferences on Environmental Ethics in Taipei in 2007 and 2009. His publications have appeared in many of the world's leading philosophy journals and a disparate range of other journals, indicating his wide interests.

Chi Kong Lai has published two books, The Reminiscences of Charles Cheng Che Lee and The State and Market in Modern China, over fifty articles in refereed journals and a number of chapters in books in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, UK, USA, Australia and Canada. He was awarded the American Economic History Association’s internationally competitive Best Dissertation Award, the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize (1993). Chi Kong has held Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow appointments at the National Library of Australia, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Academia Sinica, Centre for Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore, Oxford University, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Chi Kong is a member of the Editorial Board for various international journals and a member of the International Advisory Board in the Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora at ANU.

Rick Strelan has an international reputation as a creative and imaginative researcher into the cultural world of the New Testament with a specific focus on The Acts of the Apostles. He is a member of two international societies of biblical scholars, the Societas Novi Testamenti Studiorum (SNTS) and the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL).

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