Researcher profile

Dr Hannah Forsyth

Faculty of Education and Arts, National School of Arts

Areas of expertise: modern history; history of capitalism; history of education; labour history; global history; Australian history; settler colonial studies; higher education studies; history teaching
HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Full
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1656-3807
Phone: +612 9701 4621
Email: hannah.forsyth@acu.edu.au
Location: ACU North Sydney Campus/ACU Strathfield Campus

I am a historian of work, education and capitalism who has worked at ACU since 2014. I was an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow 2017-2019 and am shortly to publish my second monograph Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglo World c.1870-2008.

My first book was A History of the Modern Australian University (UNSW Press 2014), which was quoted in parliament that year. I am a regular contributor to the media, in newspapers like The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald as well as Griffith Review, Inside Story, The Conversation and London's Times Higher Education.

I have regularly acted as mentor to early career scholars whose work has won awards, received outstanding thesis reports and been published in esteemed journals.

I am interested in supervising work on twentieth century histories of the Anglo world, Australia, the global economy, capitalism, higher education, knowledge systems and settler colonial studies.

Projects that would align closely to my own work and would have opportunities for collaboration in publications could include histories of finance, banking and bankers, the middle class, professional women in the 20th century, and histories of higher education or history teaching. Theoretical work on materialism, settler colonialism or historical capitalism would also be welcome.

Select publications

Books and edited collections

Hannah Forsyth (2014). A History of the Modern Australian University (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing).

Hannah Forsyth and Sophie Loy-Wilson Eds (2021). Capitalism: New Histories from Australia, Special issue of Labour History November 2021

Selected journal articles

Claire Wright and Hannah Forsyth (2021). 'Managerial Capitalism and White-Collar Professions: Social Mobility in Australia's Corporate Elite' Labour History 121:1, pp.99-127. Project MUSE.

Hannah Forsyth and Michael P.R. Pearson (2021). 'Engineers and Social Engineering: Professional/Trade Unions and Social Mobility' Labour History 120, pp.169-95 doi:10.3316/informit.006497239405430; Radical Currents (blog) version

Archie Thomas, Hannah Forsyth and Andrew Bonnell (2020) '”The dice are loaded”: history, solidarity and precarity in Australian universities' History Australia 17(1), pp.21-39. doi:10.1080/14490854.2020.1717350

Hannah Forsyth (2019). 'Reconsidering women's role in the professionalisation of the economy: evidence from the Australian census 1881-1947' Australian Economic History Review 59:1, pp55-79 doi:10.1111/aehr.12147

Hannah Forsyth and Altin Gavranović (2018). 'The Logic of Survival: towards an Indigenous-centred history of capitalism in Wilcannia' Settler Colonial Studies 8(4), pp.464-488 doi:10.1080/2201473X.2017.1363967

Hannah Forsyth (2018). 'Class, professional work and the history of capitalism in Broken Hill, c.1880-1910' Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 15:2, pp.21-47 doi:10.1215/15476715-4353680

Hannah Forsyth and Sophie Loy Wilson (2017). Seeking a New Materialism in Australian History Australian Historical Studies 48(2), pp.169-88 doi:10.1080/1031461X.2017.1298635

Hannah Forsyth (2017). Post-war political economics and the growth of Australian university research, c.1945-65 History of Education Review 46(1), pp.15-32 doi:10.1108/HER-10-2015-0023

Hannah Forsyth (2015). Expanding Higher Education: institutional responses in Australia from the post-war era to the 1970s Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 51(3), 365-80 doi:10.1080/00309230.2014.929592

Hannah Forsyth (2014) 'Dreaming of Higher Education' Southerly 74 (2), 119-42. Winner of the Deen de Bortoli Prize for Applied History, 2016 doi:10.3316/informit.792227855125093

Peter Hobbins and Hannah Forsyth (2013). Mobilising medical knowledge for the nation, 1943-49, Health and History, 15(1), 59-79 doi:10.1353/hah.2013.0018.

Hannah Forsyth (2010). Academic Work in Australian Universities in the 1940s and 1950s. History of Education Review 39 (1), pp. 38-50 doi:10.1108/08198691201000003.

Hannah Forsyth (2005). Sex, Seduction and Sirens in Love: Norman Lindsay's Women, Antipodes: North American Journal of Australian Literature, 19(1), pp.58-66

Hannah Forsyth (2003) SMALL IS BIG: the AWA tower and wireless monumentality, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 17(4), pp.419-431 doi:10.1080/1030431032000152005

Selected book chapters

Hannah Forsyth (2022). ‘Rethinking Class through the history of professions’ in Steven Threadgold and Jessica Gerrard (eds) Class in Australia Monash University Press, pp.77-92.

Hannah Forsyth (2021). 'From progressive pedagogy to "capitalist fodder": The new universities in Australia' in Jill Pellew and Miles Taylor (eds) Utopian Universities: a global history of the new campuses of the 1960s Bloomsbury, pp.305-22

Hannah Forsyth (2019). ‘Census data on professions, war service and the universities 1911-1933’ in Kate Darian-Smith and James Wagner (eds) Universities, Professions and the Great War Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Hannah Forsyth (2015). ‘Digital Cloisters’ in P. McGuinness (ed.) Copyfight (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing).

Hannah Forsyth (2014) ‘Disinterested Scholars or Interested Parties? The Public's Investment in Self-interested Universities’ in M. Thornton (ed.) Through a Glass Darkly: The Neoliberal University and the Social Sciences (ANU Press, Canberra).

Geoffrey Sherington and Hannah Forsyth (2012). ‘Ideas Of a Liberal Education: An Essay On Elite And Mass Higher Education’ in Luciano Boschiero (ed), On The Purpose of a University Education: a history and examination of liberal education in Australia. (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing).

Projects

• 2017-19: Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award, AU$358,506 for the project ‘Are we all middle class now? A history of professions in Australia’.
• 2014-2016: Australian Catholic University Research Funding, AU$125,000 for ‘Australia Since the Second World War’ (with Drs Noah Riseman, Maggie Nolan and Melissa Bellanta).
• 2012: University of Sydney Research Grant, AU$25,000 for history research project ‘Taking a longer view of widening participation: toward a history of social inclusion in higher education in Sydney, c.1945-1975’.
• 2011-2012: University of Sydney Research Grant, AU$35,000 grant to consider aspects of historical consciousness and social inclusion in history teaching at school and at university (with Professors Michael A. McDonnell and Timothy Allender).

Accolades and awards

• 2016: Deen de Bortoli Award for Applied History, AU$5,000 History Council of New South Wales.
• 2011: Margaret George Award for Talented Emerging Scholars, AU$10,000 National Archives of Australia.
• 2006: Carrick Australia (later Australian Office of University Learning and Teaching) – National Award for University Teaching, Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning.

Appointments and affiliations

• 2014 – Present. Australian Catholic University. Continuing (tenured) lectureship confirmed 2016. Promoted to Senior Lecturer 2018.
• 2013 – 2014. University of Sydney. Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Social Inclusion Unit.

Hannah has also held a visiting position in the History Faculty, University of Cambridge.

Editorial roles

Member of Editorial Board, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 2021-present.
Member of Editorial Board, Labour History, 2022-present.

Public engagement

Media

• Hannah Forsyth Australian Vice Chancellors have Forfeited Public Trust, Times Higher Education 27 July 202
• Hannah Forsyth Contributor – Academic Holiday Guide, Times Higher Education
• Hannah Forsyth and Geoffrey Sherington Don’t just blame the Libs for treating universities harshly. Labor’s 1980s policies ushered in government interference The Conversation 9 July 2021
• Hannah Forsyth University Challenge, Inside Story 24 November 2020
• Hannah Forsyth The Long Road Hom. Travel in the time of COVID-19. Griffith Review 8 April 2020
• Hannah Forsyth How a fake ‘free speech crisis’ could imperil academic freedom, The Conversation 26 August 2020
• Hannah Forsyth Universities and government need to rethink their relationship with each other before it’s too late, The Conversation 15 June 2020
• Hannah Forsyth Contributor - Should you be working 100 hours a week? Times Higher Education 20 February 2020
• Hannah Forsyth Contributor - Academic Pet Peeves Times Higher Education 24 January 2019
• Hannah Forsyth Two Cheers for the Pub Test Times Higher Education 13 December 2018
• Hannah Forsyth Contributor - Top Tips for Lectures Times Higher Education 18 October 2018
• Hannah Forsyth, How Women Led the Rise of Professional Work in the Australian Economy The Conversation 16 August 2017
• Hannah Forsyth, 'The long view: scholars assess the state of history' Times Higher Education February 15, 2018
• Hannah Forsyth and Jedidiah Evans Casual exploitation must become history Times Higher Education 29 June 2017
• Hannah Forsyth (2016) Why do we still hand out honorary academic titles? The Conversation 6 October 2016
• Hannah Forsyth (2016). The Barkindji people are losing their mother, the drying Darling River, The Conversation.
• Hannah Forsyth (2015). Group of Eights change of tack smacks of self-interest in John Watson (ed.) Politics, policy & the chance of change Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, originally published in The Conversation.
• Hannah Forsyth (2015). The mass university is good for equity, but must it also be bad for learning? The Conversation
• Forsyth, H. (2015). Malcolm Frasers life and legacy: experts respond, The Conversation.
  Hannah Forsyth (2014). Fee deregulation is a bad idea, but our universities do need reform The Conversation
• Hannah Forsyth (2014). Vice-chancellors vs the collegiate: who is right on deregulation? The Conversation
• Hannah Forsyth (2014). Gough Whitlam's life and legacy: experts respond, The Conversation