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Browse the range of exciting titles ANU Press is currently working on. If you wish to receive an alert when a new title is published, click the ‘Notify me’ button next to the relevant title and register your details.
Wild Partners »
Indigenous Worlds and Industrial Giants in Papua New Guinea
Authored by: Patrick Guinness
Wild Partners traces the history of the Maututu Nakanai of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. According to a Maututu ontology, or worldview, they are surrounded by a forest filled with threatening wild forces. It is believed that outstanding men and women pioneer ways to engage these forces to bring benefit to their village community. In recent times, the Maututu have had to engage with human outsiders, including government officers, church administrators, industrial managers and migrant settlers, who like their mythological counterparts have threatened to disrupt the established world.
This study captures Maututu approaches to the threats and challenges they have faced over the last hundred years—the proclamation of the Christian world, the dislocation of the Pacific war, the development programs of the colonial and independent governments and the industrial expansion of oil palm. The challenges have at times threatened the very essence of their being through the destruction of forests, loss of land, competition for schooling and health care, marginalisation within the oil palm industry and the emergence of ‘big shot’ individuals who ignore community obligations.
Maututu have adapted to these threats, becoming successful oil palm producers and prominent professionals throughout Papua New Guinea while seeking to rejuvenate Christianity, protect forest and marine environments and build partnerships that benefit their village communities. Central to these efforts has been partnership with outside forces.
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Australian Journal of Biography and History: No. 10, 2025 »
The articles in the Australian Journal of Biography and History No. 10 cover a diverse range of people, most of them little known in the annals of Australian history. Each lived on the edges of societal expectations and norms and so raise questions about Australian identity. These articles utilise biographical methods to illuminate lives full of risk, excitement, uncertainty and unconventionality.
Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui relates the complex and conflicted story of the writer John Naish (1923–1963). Born and raised in Wales, he came to North Queensland in his twenties and produced a significant body of literature on life in the sugar cane industry and the tropical north. Uncertainty and conflict also feature in James Cotton’s article on the two years (1921–23) Edward Selby Little spent as Australian trade commissioner in Shanghai. In a brief and unhappy but still portentous career, Little was in part a victim of the ad hoc and personal nature of the policy experiments of Prime Minister W. M. Hughes, while also a victim of the machinations of his countrymen. Georgina Fitzpatrick’s portrait of Eric Shimada (Shimada Masakazu) considers an individual whose bicultural identity brought a seemingly fluent transformation from Japanese soldier to interpreter for the Australian and British occupation forces and then the International Military Tribunal in Japan.
In his article ‘A Cat with Two Tales’, Andrew Marshall examines the conflict between the Australian-born cartoonist and entrepreneur Patrick Sullivan and the American illustrator Otto Messmer over who was the rightful creator of the popular cartoon character Felix the Cat. James McDonald uses collective biographical methods to discuss the way the largely forgotten racist term ‘King Billy’ was deployed in colonial Australia to diminish and mock the status of senior Aboriginal men. Similarly, Toby Raeburn, Paul Sanders and Kerry Doyle, in their article ‘Boorong of the Burramattagai’, elevate the status of a young woman from indentured servant to important cultural and linguistic intermediary. Kate White’s article ‘Creating the Mirage’ considers the private, along with the public, lives of the 1980s business couple Christopher and Pixie Skase. This private world is also the focus of Kay Whitehead and Belinda MacGill in their article on Annie Sharpley, a teacher at Naracoorte. While Sharpley’s career seems extraordinary in length, the selfless woman teacher in a country school is a typical personification of rural education in settler countries such as Australia.
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International Review of Environmental History: Volume 10, Issue 2, 2025 »
Edited by: James Beattie, Ruth Morgan
This latest issue of the International Review of Environmental History takes readers from the settler landscapes of nineteenth-century Aotearoa New Zealand to the post-1945 rise of herbicides in Northern Europe. Lingering in Aotearoa, readers will be immersed in geological debates about the causes of past glaciation and trace the early twentieth-century appeal of the Phoenix palm. This issue also features a personal reflection on the campaign to protect K’gari-Fraser Island in the mid-1970s and its lasting influence on Australian environmental law. Together, these contributions reveal the spread and influence of transnational ideas on local understandings of environmental change and conservation.
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Law in the New Democracy »
Authored by: Paula Jane Byrne
In the 1850s opposition to the Crown in New South Wales made for unsteady ground for the administration of criminal law. This study of skirmishes between magistrates, constables and the metropolis reveals just how far understandings of law could be stretched and warped by recalcitrant local populations. At Carcoar, the local population entirely controlled how law worked; on the South Coast, ‘the people’ influenced how law intervened in their lives; in the north west of the colony publicans dominated; on the north coast, violence against First Nations/Aboriginal people was forcibly meshed into the day to day working of the courts. This study shows a ‘frontier’ centred on the coasts and in the minds of legal officials of the metropolis, but elsewhere, there was some recognition of the Aboriginal polity and an early understanding of Aboriginal rights.
With right of reply by First Nations/Aboriginal people
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Indigenous Songs of Victoria »
The rich diversity of Indigenous songs from Victoria in this book represent only a tiny fraction of what was a cultural treasure of our country. The authors have been able to bring together here well over 100 different song texts, many with translations, with musical transcriptions and analysis, and with the cultural context of these songs. The songs stand as an example of the rich cultural heritage of Indigenous people in Victoria.
The aim of Indigenous Songs of Victoria is to bring the rich cultural knowledge and artistic skill of the song-makers of Indigenous Victoria to a wider audience. In addition, the book makes the sources of these songs in manuscripts, old journals and sound recordings accessible to Indigenous people, often for the first time in decades, and for the first time in a single location.
Indigenous Songs of Victoria is dedicated to all the songsters, the clever men and women of traditional Indigenous societies who made these artistic treasures, as well as the many people who have valued, written down or otherwise recorded these songs, so that we may hear, read and be delighted by them today.
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Disrupting, Decentring and Diversifying Languages and Cultures in Australian Universities »
How can languages and cultures in Australian higher education be disrupted, decentred and diversified? Contributors to this volume advance theoretical, critical (self-)reflections and position papers, pedagogical explorations of classroom practice as well as data-driven empirical investigations to challenge, resist and stretch how languages and cultures are both taught and imagined in research.
From metaphorical conceptualisations of knowledge production, discussions of virtual reality, and innovation and creativity viewed through the lens of Indigenous epistemologies, to language learning curricula designed to challenge heteronormativity and cisgenderism, and a reconceptualisation of the role of language educators as designers, each chapter emphasises the vital role of innovation as the driving force of positive disruption.
What emerges here is the resilience and adaptability demanded of languages and cultures researchers and educators as they navigate an ever-shifting educational landscape. Taken as a whole, this volume serves as a testament to these scholars’ collective capacity to adapt, evolve, embrace and actively drive change, fostering a more diverse, equitable and inclusive future for their field.
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Gender and Politics Reimagined »
Centring Oceanic and Asian Lenses
This timely collection reflects a coming together of academics, gender and development practitioners and activists to reflect on the gendering of politics. By centring Asia and Oceania and traversing numerous disciplines, the volume disrupts the illusion of certainty and clarity as to what is known about gender and politics. Individual chapters present specific research projects, while providing epistemological, theoretical and methodological reflections on how knowledge is produced and by whom, challenging the existing canon. The contributions collectively demonstrate the possibilities for theorising from Asia and Oceania to address the lack of diversity in political representation and leadership on a global scale, in which gender, race, class, caste, (dis)ability and sexual identity are powerfully interconnected.
Arising out of the Gender and Cultural Diversity in Politics: Australia, Asia and the Pacific workshop held at The Australian National University in 2022, this collection underscores the importance of fostering scholarship and mentorship in the academy. The diversity of authorship encompasses differences in ethnicity, nationality, sexuality and career stage, with an emphasis on the inclusion of authors from various Oceanic and Asian countries. The volume promotes academic practice as integral to social change, and social action as a form of knowledge production. As such, Gender and Politics Reimagined is sure to be a cornerstone in future scholarly and activist discussions.
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Projecting Voices »
Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honour of Jane Simpson
This volume provides cutting-edge research on a wide range of questions in linguistics research, mostly centred on Australian Indigenous languages. Written by world-leading experts, the chapters take a fresh look at current questions in each topic, inspired by the work of Australian linguist Jane Simpson.
The chapters have implications for linguistic theory in the areas of historical linguistics, morphosyntax, semantics, the lexicon, language acquisition and issues in languages in education, and renewal of endangered languages.
This volume is essential reading for students and experienced researchers alike, with interests in theoretical and applied linguistics, especially in topics and issues related to Australian Indigenous languages.
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Deeper, Strategic Collaboration in the Securities Sector »
India and Australia
Authored by: Sonia Khosa
Winner of ANU Press ECR Prize in Legal Scholarship
In an era of globalised finance and increasing cross-border activity, regulatory cooperation has become essential for market integrity and development. This book examines the potential for strategic collaboration between India and Australia in the securities sector—two nations with distinct but complementary economic and legal frameworks. Through a comparative analysis of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), it evaluates alignment with International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) principles, focusing on supervisory powers, enforcement mechanisms and compliance effectiveness. The analysis identifies shared regulatory goals and governance principles, highlighting opportunities for bilateral cooperation.
Offering a roadmap for capital market integration and regulatory innovation, the book makes a timely contribution to international financial scholarship. It delivers practical insights for policymakers, legal scholars and regulators interested in forging resilient cross-border partnerships—both within the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
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