Research stories
ANU study reveals who is spreading online conspiracies
Due to the Internet, conspiracy theories are on the rise and playing an increasingly significant role in global politics. Now new research from The Australian National University (ANU) has analysed digital data to reveal exactly who is propagating them and why. Lead researcher Dr Colin Klein, of…
ANU Archaeologist discovers Cornish barrow site
An archaeologist at The Australian National University (ANU) has discovered a prehistoric Bronze-Age barrow, or burial mound, on a hill in Cornwall and is about to start excavating the untouched site which overlooks the English Channel. The site dates back to around 2,000 BC and was discovered by…
Cabinet papers 1994-95: How the republic was doomed without a directly elected president
By Prof. Frank Bongiorno, ANU School of HistoryNot long after defeat in the 1999 referendum, Malcolm Turnbull, a leading republican who had chaired the Republic Advisory Committee (RAC) appointed by Paul Keating, was licking his wounds.“We must not let the desperate desire not to be ‘elitist’ lead…
Cabinet papers 1994-95: The Keating government begins to craft its legacy
By Prof. Nicholas Brown, ANU School of HistoryIf Labor was surprised by its re-election in March 1993 – the “sweetest victory of them all”, as Paul Keating claimed – there was, for months before the 1996 election was called, much less confidence in government ranks that it could hang on.They were…
Keating’s Working Nation plan for jobs was hijacked by bureaucracy: cabinet papers 1994-95
By Prof. John Wanna, Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration, ANU The White Paper called Working Nation became the Labor government’s major economic statement in Paul Keating’s second term. However, the policy was principally an after-the-fact attempt to clean up a mess in the labour…
Q&A: Dr Andrew Glikson on the Plutocene age
Taken individually, climate change and the threat of nuclear war each hold the potential to change the face of the earth and life on earth as we know it. A new book by earth and paleoclimate scientist Dr Andrew Glikson of the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology projects a scenario in which…
Cars, bicycles and the fatal myth of equal reciprocity
By Dr Ashley Carruthers, Lecturer in Anthropology, ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology. Any public conversation about on-road cycling in Australia seems to have only one metaphor for the relationship between drivers and cyclists: equal reciprocity.…