College Executive - Professor Joan Beaumont

Biography  |  Monographs  |  Book Chapters  |  Refereed Journal Articles  |  Review Articles, Reference Works and Notes  |  Contact Details

Biography

Professor Joan Beaumont, Director of the Faculty of Arts, College of Arts and Social Sciences, is an internationally recognized historian of Australia in the two world wars, Australian defence and foreign policy, the history of prisoners of war and the memory and heritage of war.  

Her publications include Ministers, Mandarins and Diplomats: The Making of Australian Foreign 1941-69 (ed.); Australia's War, 1939-45 (ed.) Australia's War, 1914-18 (ed.); Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity, 1941-1945; and Comrades in Arms: British Aid to Russia, 1941-45.  She was general editor of vol. 6 of the definitive reference volume in the Australian Centenary History of Defence, Australian Defence: Sources and Statistics.  Her current research includes a general history of Australia in the First World War and the heritage and transnational memory of the Thai Burma railway.

Prior to joining The Australian National University she was Dean of Arts (& Education) at Deakin University Victoria (1998-2008). 

She is a graduate of the University of Adelaide (BA Hons) and the University of London (King's College) (PhD), a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia, Vice-President of the International Committee for the History of the Second World War and Vice President of the International Commission for the History of International Relations.  She is a recipient of an Australian Red Cross Service Award, for exceptional and continuous service, and has been appointed in 2009 a member of panel of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. 

She is regular commentator on television about the history of Australia at war.

Her publications include:

Monographs

Joan Beaumont, Ilma Matinuzzi O’Brien and Mathew Trinca, Under Suspicion: Citizenship and Internment during the Second World War, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2008. 

Joan Beaumont, Christopher Waters and David Lowe, Ministers, Mandarins and Diplomats: Making Australian Foreign Policy, 1941-69, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2003. 

Joan Beaumont (ed.), Australian Defence: Sources and Statistics, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001, 680 pp. 

Joan Beaumont (ed.) Australia's War, 1939-45, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1996, 209 pp 

Joan Beaumont (ed.) Australia's War, 1914-1918, Sydney, Allen & Unwin,  1995, 195 pp.  

Joan Beaumont, Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity, 1941-1945, Sydney. Allen & Unwin, 1988, 270 pp. 

Beaumont, Joan. Comrades in Arms: British Aid to Russia, 1941-1945, London: Davis-Poynter, 1980, 264 pp.

Book Chapters

'Australia between Globalization and Regionalization: The Historical Experience',  in Joan Beaumont and Alfredo Canavero (ed.) Globalization and Regionalisation in the History of International Relations, Unicopli, Milan, 2005.

‘Prisoners of war in Australian national memory’, in Bob Moore and Barbara Hately (eds), Prisoners of War, Prisoners of peace: Captivity, Homecoming and Memory in World War II, Berg, 2005, pp. 185-94. 

‘Gallipoli and Australian National Identity’, in Neal Garnham and Keith Jeffery (eds), Culture, Place and Identity’, University College Dublin Press, Dublin, 2005, pp. 138-51

‘Australia’, in John Bourne, Peter Liddle and Ian Whitehead (eds) The Great World War 1914-1945: vol. 2, Who Won? Who Lost? Harper Collins, London, 2001, pp. 197-210 

(with Garry Woodard) ‘Paul Hasluck and the bureaucracy: The Department of External Affairs’ in Tom Stannage, Kay Saunders and Richard Nile (eds), Paul Hasluck in Australian History: Civic Personality and Public Life, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1998, pp. 143-51. 

'Protecting prisoners of war, 1939-95', in Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich (eds), Prisoners of War and their Captors in World War II, Berg, Oxford, 1996, pp. 277-97.

Refereed Journal Articles

‘Contested transnational heritage: the demolition of Changi prison, Singapore’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, 2009, pp. 294-312. 

‘Australian citizenship and the two world wars’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, in press, 2007.

‘Australian Memory and the US Wartime Alliance: The Australian–American memorial and the Battle of the Coral Sea’, War & Society, vol. 22, no. 1, May 2004, pp. 69-87.

‘Whatever happened to patriotic women, 1914-18?’ Australian Historical Studies, October 2000, pp. 273-86.

‘Paul Hasluck as Minister for External Affairs: Towards a Reappraisal' (with Garry Woodard), Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 52, no. 1, 1998, pp. 63-75.

‘Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 1993' (with Garry Woodard), Australian Outlook, vol. 48, no. 1, 1994, pp. 97-106.

‘The General History of the Second World War', International History Review, vol. XIV, no. 4, 1992, pp. 753-66. 

‘Starving for Democracy: Britain's Blockade of and Relief for Occupied Europe, 1939-45', War & Society vol. 8, no. 2, October 1990, pp. 57-82. 

‘Limitations on methods and means of warfare' Australian Yearbook of International Law vol. 9, 1984, pp. 267-75. 

‘Rank, privilege and prisoners of war' War & Society vol. 1 no. 1, 1983, pp. 67-94. 

‘Trade, Strategy, and Foreign Policy in Conflict: The Rolls-Royce Affair 1946-1947' International History Review vol. II, no. 4, 1980, pp. 602-18. 

‘Great Britain and the Rights of Neutral Countries: The Case of Iran, 1941' Journal of Contemporary History vol. 16, 1981, pp. 213-28

Review Articles, Reference Works and Notes 

‘Review article:  Prisoners of War in the Second World War’ Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 42 (3), 2007, pp. 509-18. 

“The Never Ending Legend’, ABC Anzac Site, www.abc.net.au/news/imdepth.anzac, 2005. 

‘World War I’, and “Conscription’ in Brian Galleghan and Winsome Roberts (eds), Oxford Companion to Australian Politics, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, in press, 2007. 

‘Julianna Waugh’ in Australian Dictionary of Biography, in press, 2005. 

‘The State of Australian History of War’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 121, April 2003, pp. 165-8. 

“Charles Kevin” in John Ritchie (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 15, 1940-1980, Kem-Pie, Melbourne University Press, 2000, p. 15. 

*'Foreign relations' and 'The Second World War' entries for Oxford Companion to Australian History, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 260-62, 696-96. 

*'Prisoners of war', 'Gull Force', 'Ambon', 'Scott' entries in Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris and Robin Prior (eds) Oxford Companion of Australian Military History, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 31, 281, 472-81, 540.

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