From the editors

We are delighted to welcome readers to a new year of History Australia and to a new team to manage it. Before introducing ourselves more fully, we would like to express our gratitude to Catharine Coleborne and James Dunk for being our special issue editors. It has been wonderful to have a safe pair of hands help us out during our tricky triennial change-over period. For more than a year they have planned and managed a brilliant collection of articles about the history of madness and marginality. Their introduction gives an excellent summary of the field, an outline of their contributors’ interventions, and a discussion of future directions on this topic. We are pleased to publish here their nine pieces. They span the history of madness in Australia and its supposed marginality, from convict times to the present. The articles delve into particular regions, like Western Australia, and into connections between the Australian colonies and other settler societies, such as South Africa. Together these articles show, as Coleborne and Dunk argue, how mental illness has been history’s ‘constant companion’ far more than it has ever really been on the margins.

Our team from the Australian Catholic University is excited to continue on from the Macquarie team in 2022. We are a team of four editors, with decades of collective editorial experience. The team is grateful especially to the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research at ACU for his office’s support of the journal for the next three years. With that support the journal will be able to continue employing an editorial assistant. From 2022 this position will be filled by Dr Lorinda Cramer, also attached to ACU. We are fortunate to be joined by three other individuals this year. Dr Claire Lowrie from the University of Wollongong, like Professor Kate Fullagar, carries on from the previous team, which allows the journal a reassuring measure of stability. She is joined as Book Reviews Editor by Dr Alexandra Roginski from Deakin University. Dr Mike Jones from Australian National University completes the group as the History-Off-The-Page Editor.

Our primary mission is to uphold the quality that previous editors have established. We aim to keep up at least two of their innovations. We will continue to publish an annual ‘Life in History’ – a tradition begun by the ANU team. And we will still offer the annual ‘Landmark History’, as initiated by the Macquarie team. We also hope to present particularly focused spots in the upcoming years on history and health, history in higher education, history and law, and history and religion.

As ever, the journal is interested to hear pitches from historians for special issues or smaller fora on coherent, relevant, and urgent topics. Ideally these collections will centre thought-provoking research from both emerging and international scholars. We remind readers that our remit is to publish ‘high-quality and innovative scholarship in any field of history’. Our pages reflect the concerns of historians making, teaching, and applying history in both Australia and its region. They showcase the breadth and vibrancy of the historical community in Australasia.

As we head into an uncertain era after more than two years of national and global crises, we recognise the duress under which much historical research is now appearing. However, the record-breaking numbers and invigorating quality of the attendees at our association’s annual conference last year shows that Australian historical scholarship is yet defiant. We look forward to sharing some of that work with you all this year and beyond.