Committee Members

Michael J. Hiscox is Professor in the Department of Government. He grew up in Tamworth, a small town in the north-west of New South Wales. He received his B. Econ. (First Class Hon.) from the University of Sydney in 1989 and his Ph.D in Government from Harvard University in 1997. He was Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, from 1997 to 2001. From 2001 until 2005 he was the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard. The focus of his research is political economy and international trade, investment, and immigration. His first book, International Trade and Political Conflict, was published by Princeton University Press in 2002 and won the William H. Riker Prize for the best book in political economy that year. His second book, High Stakes: The Political Economy of U.S, Trade Sanctions, 1950-2000, will be published this year by Cambridge University Press.

David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and an Honorary Professor of History in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney. Born in Britain, he was educated at Cambridge University and Princeton University and taught for eleven years at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 2004. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), and Foundations of Modern International Thought (2013). He recently co-edited Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People (2013) with Alison Bashford, a former holder of the Australian Studies Chair, and he is now working on two books: a history of ideas of civil war from Rome to the present and an argument for the return of the longue durée in historical writing. A frequent visitor to Australia, he has held visiting positions at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney and is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, with major research interests in environmental history, the history of science, and intellectual history.  Her numerous trips to Australia have included a visiting position at the University of Sydney and research for her most recent book, Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit (2012).  She is presently working on two projects:  T. R. Malthus and extra-European populations, and the idea of nature in history.

Philip J. Deloria is Professor of History at Harvard University, where his research and teaching focus on the social, cultural and political histories of the relations among American Indian peoples and the United States, as well as the comparative and connective histories of indigenous peoples in a global context.

His first book, Playing Indian (1998), traced the tradition of white “Indian play” from the Boston Tea Party to the New Age movement, while his 2004 book Indians in Unexpected Places examined the ideologies surrounding Indian people in the early twentieth century and the ways Native Americans challenged them through sports, travel, automobility, and film and musical performance.  He is the co-editor of The Blackwell Companion to American Indian History (with Neal Salisbury) and C.G. Jung and the Sioux Traditions by Vine Deloria (with Jerome Bernstein).  His most recent book, co-authored with Alexander Olson is American Studies: A User’s Guide (2017), which offers a comprehensive treatment of the historiography and methodology of the field of American Studies.  He is currently completing a project on American Indian visual arts of the mid-twentieth century, and coediting (with Beth Piatote) I Heart Nixon: Essays on the Indigenous Everyday.

Deloria received the Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1994, taught for six years at the University of Colorado, and then at the University of Michigan from 2001 to 2017, before joining the faculty at Harvard in January 2018. At Michigan, he served as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, Director of the Program in American Culture, and of the Native American Studies Program, and held the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Chair.  His courses have included American Indian history, Environmental history, the American West, and American Studies methods, as well as Food Studies, Songwriting, and Big History. 

Deloria is a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, where he chairs the Repatriation Committee.  He is former president of the American Studies Association, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous prizes and recognitions.  Along with Erika Doss, he is the series editor of CultureAmerica, a University Press of Kansas series focused on American cultural history.  He maintains ongoing academic engagements with scholars in Taiwan and Australia.

As Vice Provost, Elliott oversees and works to advance international academic initiatives, extending the global reach of Harvard’s research and teaching activities. In this capacity, Elliott serves as the University’s representative in negotiating agreements with foreign governments, receiving senior-level international delegations, and representing Harvard to peer institutions and alumni worldwide. In addition, he shares responsibility for supporting the community of international students, scholars, and faculty in Cambridge and Boston, as well as for guiding Harvard’s overall global strategy and sustaining its ongoing development as a global university.

Elliott is an authority on the last four centuries of Chinese history, in particular the Qing period (1636-1911). His research encompasses the history of relations between China and its nomadic frontier, with special attention to questions of ethnicity and empire. His first book, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China, is a pioneering study in the “New Qing History,” an approach emphasizing the imprint of Inner Asian traditions upon China’s last imperial state. He is also the author of Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World, and has published more than twenty-five scholarly articles. He serves on numerous editorial boards, and was for three years the director of the Fairbank Center of Chinese Studies.

A graduate of Yale (BA 1981 summa cum laude, MA 1984), Elliott earned his PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and at the University of Michigan before coming to Harvard in 2003.  He can be found on Twitter at @Mark_C_Elliott.

Maria Gough is Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University.  Born and raised in Melbourne, she studied law, philosophy, and the history of art at the University of Melbourne, and then completed her MA and PhD at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, respectively.  Before joining the faculty in 2009, she taught at the University of Michigan (1996-2003) and Stanford University (2003-2009).  Her primary area of research and teaching is European Modernism, with a particular emphasis on the Russian and Soviet avant-gardes.  Tackling problems in the history of abstraction, drawing, photography, print media, propaganda, para-architecture, exhibition design, and museology, her research has appeared in October, New German Critique, Modernism/modernity, RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, Parkett, Artforum, and the Cahiers du Musée national d'art moderne.  Her book on the Constructivist debates of the 1920s, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution, was published by the University of California Press in 2005.  She is currently writing a book on the intermedia projects of El Lissitzky and Gustavs Klucis, and another on the photographic practices of foreign visitors to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.

Philip Mead was inaugural Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia (2009-2018) and Director of the Westerly Centre. He is currently Emeritus Professor, University of Western Australia, and Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. From 2009-2010 Philip was Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack Visiting Chair of Interdisciplinary Australian Studies at the Freie Universität, Berlin and in 2015-2016 he was Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. He has taught Australian Studies at universities in Australia, India, the USA, China, Germany and Slovenia. Philip is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. 

Philip has published in the areas of national and transnational literary studies, Indigenous literatures, cultural history and theory, poetics, literary education, Shakespearian institutions, and digital humanities. In 1991 he co-edited, with John Tranter, The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry. His Networked Language: Culture and History in Australian Poetry won the 2010 New South Wales Premier’s Award for literary scholarship. In 2018 he published Antipodal Shakespeare: Remembering and Forgetting in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, 1916-2016 (with Gordon McMullan) and The Social Work of Narrative: human rights and the cultural imaginary (ed. with Gareth Griffiths). In 2023 he published Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers: the Roles of Literature in Shaping English Teachers’ Professional Knowledge and Identities (with Larissa McLean Davies, Brenton Doecke, Wayne Sawyer and Lyn Yates). He is a co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of Australian Poetry (with Ann Vickery). 

Emma Kowal is the Alfred Deakin Professor and ARC Future Fellow at Deakin University. She is a cultural and medical anthropologist. Her previous work as a medical doctor and public health researcher in Indigenous health settings in Australia have led her to pursue two intersecting lines of theory and empirical research: (1) Australian racial politics: Indigeneity and Whiteness, settler colonialism and postcolonialism, racism and anti-racism, and (2) Science and technology studies: the anthropology of biomedical research, genomics, bioethics, and public health. 

Her current areas of interest include:

• Australian racial politics, especially Indigeneity and Whiteness
• Settler colonialism and postcolonialism, racism and anti-racism
• Science and technology studies
• Applications of genomics and epigenomics with First Nations groups
• Bioethics, biopolitics and public health

One thing Lynette enjoys most about her position is her engagement with other disciplines - she has co-authored with Monash archaeologist Professor Ian J McNiven - and she is eager to help facilitate interdisciplinary opportunities for her graduate students as well.

'As a historian, and anthropological historian, I like working with the archaeologists. I think it's great for students to be able to bounce ideas off two different schools of thought. That works really well for me.'

She also takes her engagement with other communities and cultures very seriously.

'One of those things in the area we work in is that you have to remind yourself that it's an absolute privilege to work on, and with, indigenous groups and artefacts. It's really important that you actually take it with a high standard of personal ethics. That includes engaging with the communities that are appropriate, talking to the appropriate people - just being a decent human being.'

Lynette is a strong believer in the importance of Indigenous studies as part of the curriculum.

'I'm very keen to see as many students as possible undertake Aboriginal studies units. Frankly, I think such subjects should be essential for every undergraduate, particularly arts graduates. People need to understand what it means to be living in a continent that had over 600 different tribal groups and 250 different languages.'

One of her most challenging projects has been attempting to learn one of those languages herself.

'It's important to me, but frankly, it's really, really hard to learn an Aboriginal language. My tongue does not seem to want to do what I want it to do. It dances in the wrong places, and it trips. So I would love to learn an Aboriginal language, but I think I'm going to have to content myself with maybe two sentences.'

Lynette held an Australian Research Council Professorial fellowship between 2011-2016. She is an ARC Laureate Professor (2020-2025).

Simon Ville is Senior Professor of Economic and Business History at the University of Wollongong. He was the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University (2022-3), was formerly a member of the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council, and was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (2006). He has held visiting fellowships at the University of Glasgow, University College London, the University of Melbourne, and Harvard Business School, and is an affiliate of the Centre for Economic History at the Australian National University. He has delivered more than 100 keynote lectures, seminars, and conference papers, presenting his work in over 20 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Australasia. 

He has written extensively on big business, foreign investment, innovation, the rural and resource industries, natural history trading, social capital, transportation history, and the Vietnam War. His work has been published in a wide range of highly ranked journals across disciplines and his books have appeared with leading university and commercial publishers including Cambridge, Oxford, Melbourne, Manchester, New South, and Auckland university presses. 

Among his major works are The Rural Entrepreneurs: A History of the Stock and Station Agent Industry in Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge University Press, 2000); The Big End of Town. Big Business and Corporate Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia with Grant Fleming and David Merrett (Cambridge University Press 2004); and The Cambridge Economic History of Australia jointly edited with Glenn Withers (Cambridge University Press, 2015). His International Business in Australia before World War One. Shaping a Multinational Economy was published by Palgrave in 2022. 

He has collaborated and consulted with a wide range of national and international public and private sector organisations including: UNESCO; Shell Corporation; South Korean Government; Australian Federal Department of Veterans Affairs; New South Wales Government Office for Women; National Council of Wool-selling Brokers; the Australian Bureau of Statistics; Sky History Channel; Narara Ecovillage; Karratha & Districts Chambers of Commerce and Industry; the Australian Museum, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

A specialist in water policy reform, Mike has developed proposals for the transformation of water rights in the western USA and for the introduction of groundwater sharing systems in California.  

As a result of an Australian Government endowment, each year Harvard University appoints one person to the Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University.  Mike held this Chair during the 2013/14 academic year.  While in this position, he taught a course on transformational policy reform and, with Christine Esau edited an Earthscan iting a book on the same subject.

In the past, Mike has led teams that have developed frameworks for the introduction of a greenhouse gas emissions trading system in Australia; fishery management in NSW; biodiversity conservation on private land; and for rangeland management in NSW, SA and the NT.  For three years, he worked on the integration of agricultural and environmental policies with OECD.  He also played a key role in establishing Australia’s National Land and Water Resources Audit.

Mike is a current member of the Global Water Partnership's Technical Committee and is a recent member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water Security.  In 2010/11 he lead the water component of a UNEP study on opportunities to pursue green growth strategies throughout the world.  He was a founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

In 2006, Mike was awarded Australia’s premier water research prize – the Land and Water Australia Eureka Award for Water Research.  The award recognizes the significant contribution of his research with the late Jim McColl to the development of improved water entitlement, allocation and trading systems in Australia.

Mike is best known for his contribution to the development of natural resource and environmental policies.  In recent times, his research has focused on the use and design of market-based instruments with attention to water.  He has played a critical role in the consideration of options for the Murray Darling Basin.  Internationally, he is known for his capacity to integrate biophysical and economic information to produce innovative policy proposals that catalyze change.

Prof Young is a Research Fellow with Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and an Honorary Professor with the University College London.  In 2012 spent several months in the United Kingdom working on water policy options for the Department of Environment, Food and Regional Affairs.  This included consideration of ways to significantly reform water abstraction licensing and pricing arrangements.

In 2013, he spent several months with the OECD’s Environment Directorate working on a draft framework for the design of water abstraction regimes and options for the management of water scarcity challenges in the Netherlands.

Prior to joining the University of Adelaide, Mike spent 30 years with CSIRO where amongst other things he established their Policy and Economic Research Unit with offices in Adelaide, Canberra and Perth.

In 2003, Mike was awarded a Centenary Medal “for outstanding service through environmental economics”.  In 2009, he was named South Australian of the Year in the Environment Category.

Examples of policy proposals that have been adopted by government and resulting directly from research that he has led include

• The total reform of water pastoral land leasing arrangements in Australia’s Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales;
• The reform of kangaroo harvesting licensing arrangements in New South Wales;
• The conversion of fishery licenses into shares in New South Wales;
• The shift in the focus of biodiversity protection policies in Australia to ones that involve the provision of incentives for the conservation of biodiversity on private land;
• The unbundling of Australia’s water licences and the resultant development of an efficient trading system;
• The Australian Government decision to transfer responsibility for the administration of the Murray Darling Basin’s water resources to an independent expertise-based authority.

His full curriculum vitae lists over 240 publications.  He has been Associate Editor of Ecological Economics and is a member of twelve editorial boards.  He holds degrees in economics and agricultural science. 

More information is available at >www.myoung.net.au