Professor Kate Darian-Smith

Biography

Professor Kate Darian-Smith is Professor of Australian Studies and History. She teaches undergraduate subjects in both programs, and in the Masters of International Studies. She is the Deputy Dean and Associate Dean (International and Graduate Studies) for the Faculty of Arts in 2007.

Kate is President of the International Australian Studies Association (InASA). She has been involved in Australian Studies activities in Europe and North America; has directed government-funded Australian Studies projects in Taiwan and Indonesia; is a member of the Steering Committee to manage, on behalf of the Australian-China Council, Australian Studies initiatives in China (with University of Queensland); and has worked with the Australia-Japan Foundation to assist the growth of Australian Studies in Japan.

She is a Research Associate at Museum Victoria, and serves on a number of editorial boards, including as Chair of the Board of Management of Meanjin journal and as Reviews Editor for Australian Historical Studies.

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Research

Kate is currently completing a social and cultural history of agricultural shows in Australia, funded by the Australian Research Council. She is a convenor of the 'Cultural Histories and Geographies' node of the ARC-funded Cultural Research Network (2005-9) and was a chief investigator in an ARC-funded special project in conjunction with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, ANU and Sydney University on 'Writing for Scholars' (2005-6).

Current ARC-funded research projects:

1. DP0663788: Dr H Lewi; Prof K Darian-Smith; Prof PJ Goad; Dr JL Willis; A/Prof JF Murphy
   Title: Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds: Designing Everyday Modernism for Australian Communities 1920-1970
2. LP0669282: Prof K Darian-Smith; Prof WS Logan; Prof GP Seal
   Title: Childhood, Tradition and Change: a national study of the historical and contemporary practices and significance of Australian children's playlore
   Partner Organisations: National Library of Australia and Museum Victoria
3. LP0776803: Prof K.Darian-Smith; Dr. Penny Edmonds; Dr Julie Evans; Antoinette Smith
   Title: Conciliation Narratives and the Historical Imagination in British Pacific Rim Settler Societies.
   Partner Organisations: National Museum of Australia, Museum Victoria, Tasmanian Arts Gallery and Museum

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Publications

• Kate Darian-Smith, Pat Grimshaw and Stuart Macintyre (eds), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures, Melbourne University Press, 2007
• Kate Darian-Smith and J. Factor (eds), Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and Australian Children’s Folklore, Melbourne Museum, 2005
• Kate Darian-Smith, D. Carter and G. Worby (eds), Teaching Australian Studies: Thinking Across Cultures, Queensland University Press, 2004
• Kate Darian-Smith and Michael Cathcart (eds), Stirring Australian Speeches: A Definitive Collection from Botany to Bali, Melbourne University Press, 2004
• Kate Darian-Smith, Challenging Histories: Reflections on Australian History (special issue of Australian Historical Studies), 2002
• Kate Darian-Smith and S. Wills, Agricultural Shows in Australia: A Survey, 1999
• Kate Darian-Smith and P. Hamilton (eds), Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, Oxford University Press, 1994, 1997
• Kate Darian-Smith, L. Gunner and S. Nuttall (eds), Text, Theory, Space: land, literature and history in South Africa and Australia, Routledge, 1996
• Kate Darian-Smith, On the Home Front: Melbourne in wartime 1939-1945, Oxford University Press, 1990

Available through e-prints repository:

• Darian-Smith, Kate and Wills, Sara (2004) ‘Beefeaters, Bobbies and a New Varangian Guard? Negotiating Forms of "Britishness" in Suburban Australia’, in History of Intellectual Culture, vol 4, no 1, pp. 1-18
• Darian-Smith, Kate and Wills, Sara (2003) 'Beauty Contest for the British Bulldogs? Negotiating (Trans)national identities in Suburban Melbourne', in Cultural Studies Review 9(2):pp. 65-83
• Darian-Smith, Kate (2002) 'Up the Country: Histories and Communities', in Australian Historical Studies 33(118):pp. 90-99
• Darian-Smith, Professor Kate and Wills, Dr Sara (2001) 'From Queen of Agriculture to Miss Showgirl', in Journal of Australian Studies 71:pp. 17-32

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Teaching

Kate has interests in Australian cultural and social history, particularly in the twentieth century; war and Australian society, with reference to gender; the relationship between memory and history; museum studies and forms of exhibiting histories and cultures; comparative colonial discourse and postcolonial studies; and is currently researching interactions between rural and urban Australia.

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Supervision

Kate supervises postgraduate students across a range of topics in Australian studies, Australian history and cultural studies and is particularly interested in interdisciplinary research approaches. In 2006 she was the recipient of the Faculty of Arts Best Practice in Supervision Award in recognition of excellence in research higher degree supervision. (For full citation see: www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/staff/research/ExcellenceSprvsn2006.html).

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