Dr Amanda Laugesen

Dr Amanda Laugesen is Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, ANU. She completed her PhD in the History Program at the ANU in 2000, and subsequently worked as a research editor at the Australian National Dictionary Centre, ANU, as well as undertaking teaching in the History Department. She produced two lexical monographs for Oxford University Press (Convict Words: the Language of the Australian Convict Era and Diggerspeak: the Language of Australians at War) while working at the ANDC, as well as working on a number of other projects relating to the history of Australian English. She also worked as an Editorial Assistant on the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary. Amanda was appointed as a Lecturer in History at the University of Southern Queensland in 2004, and Lecturer in History and American Studies at Flinders University in 2006. She returned to Canberra at the end of 2008. She has extensive teaching experience in US, Australian, and World History, and has experience in the development of postgraduate and online course design and delivery.

Amanda's research includes publications in the areas of historical memory, the history of reading, libraries and publishing, cultural history (with a particular interest in the cultural history of war), the history of Australian English, and lexicography. Her most recent books are Furphies and Whizzbangs: Anzac Slang from the Great War (2015) and Boredom is the Enemy: the Intellectual and Imaginative Worlds of Australian Soldiers in the Great War and Beyond (2012). The latter is a study of Australian soldiers’ experiences of education and entertainment during wartime. Her current research areas include: cultural history of Australian English and slang; language, sound and war; Australian literary culture in the early 20th century; and the global history of publishing, libraries and literacy.