ANU Meet the author - Tom Griffiths
Sept
21
Meet the Author

ANU Meet the author - Tom Griffiths

ANU Meet the author - Tom Griffiths

6pm, Monday 21 September 2026
Tangney Rd, Cinema, Cultural Centre Kambri
(ANU Building 153), Acton, ACT, 2601

Tom Griffiths will be in conversation with Mark McKenna on his new book Alice's dreaming. An astonishing work of history about a girl and the Indigenous world she encountered.

Early last century, Alice Duncan-Kemp grew up on a remote Queensland cattle station. Later she would write down her childhood memories of learning from Aboriginal women and men at home on their own Country. In her books, she evoked a rich parallel universe of storytelling and lore, which she felt privileged to witness. She also spoke of an informal local treaty that curbed the violence of the frontier.

What are we to make of 'Alice's dreaming' today? Master historian and writer Tom Griffiths takes us into – and beyond – this revelatory encounter. Through it we glimpse the turmoil of a complex and tragic frontier, and a remarkable story of survival and cultural resilience. In recent years, the Mithaka people Alice lived among and wrote about have reclaimed their Country, drawing in part on her writing to support their claims.

“Alice’s dreaming is at once biography, literary thriller and stunning evocation of Country and place.”
— Mark McKenna

Tom Griffiths reveals how 60,000 years of First Nations history is intricately woven into the fabric of contemporary Australian values. Alice's dreaming is a work of the greatest importance to our understanding of who we are. It is also great literature, an epic story told with imaginative distinction.' —Alex Miller

Tom Griffiths AO is Emeritus Professor of History at the Australian National University. His writing has won prizes in literature, history, science, politics and journalism, including the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History and the Douglas Stewart and Nettie Palmer prizes for nonfiction. His books include The Art of Time Travel, Hunters and Collectors, Forests of Ash and Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica.

Mark McKenna is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Sydney. He is the author of several prize-winning books, including Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian History of Place and the multi-award winner An Eye for Eternity, The Life of Manning Clark, winner of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Prize for Nonfiction. His most recent book, From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories, won the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize.

The vote of thanks will be given by Associate Professor Ruth Morgan, Director, Centre for Environmental History. Australian National University

Books will be available for signing from 5.30pm and again after the event. 

Additional information:

Registration is required for this event.

Accessible parking spaces are available around campus should you require them.

By registering for this event, you are accepting our privacy policy.

A podcast will be made available after the event.

Register here

Free Event: Registration is required

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ANU Meet the author - Mark Cully
Sept
28
Meet the Author

ANU Meet the author - Mark Cully

ANU Meet the author - Mark Cully

6pm, Monday 28 September 2026
Tangney Rd, Cinema, Cultural Centre Kambri
(ANU Building 153), Acton, ACT, 2601

Mark Cully will be in conversation with Alan Gamlen on Mark's new book Waves of Plenty: Immigration and the Making of Australia, thedefinitive story of how immigration made Australia.

Many Australians can trace family journeys to new lives in Australia. In this landmark work, Mark Cully tells the full story of immigration to Australia, from pre-colonial origins through colonisation, the gold rushes, the post-war immigration boom, the end of the White Australia policy, and the modern era of unbound temporary migration.

Rigorously researched, the book dismantles persistent myths, gives human faces to statistics, and maps the forces that transformed a distant colony into one of the world's most diverse societies. Cully traces how immigration has changed Australia, making it bigger, younger, richly diverse, less provincial and more powerful.This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where Australia came from, the fraught politics of immigration, and lessons for the future.

“Mark Cully’s detailed and lively account of the waves of migration that have shaped Australia provides new insights into our society, our economy and our place in the world. Written with a researcher’s head but a (migrant) writer’s heart, it goes beyond the numbers to highlight the richness of the migrant experience and contribution. ”
— Danielle Wood, chair of the Productivity Commission

Mark Cully was chief economist for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Department of Industry, as well as chair of the OECD's Working Party on Migration. As head of macroeconomic policy in the Treasury, he led the design of the JobKeeper program during the pandemic. He is an expert panel member of the Fair Work Commission and a visiting fellow at ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy.

Professor Alan Gamlen is the Founding Director of the ANU Migration Hub and a Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at ANU. He has worked on issues of human migration, mobility, and identity for two decades and held related appointments at Oxford University Stanford University, the Max Planck Society, the Japan Centre for Area Studies, Monash University and Wellington University. From 2010-2020 he was Founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Migration.

The vote of thanks will be given by Elizabeth Collett, a Global Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and a member of Australia’s Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration

Books will be available for signing from 5.30pm and again after the event. 

Additional information:

Registration is required for this event.

Accessible parking spaces are available around campus should you require them.

By registering for this event, you are accepting our privacy policy.

A podcast will be made available after the event.

Register here

Free Event: Registration is required

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ANU Meet the author: Amy Remeikis
Aug
6
Meet the Author

ANU Meet the author: Amy Remeikis

ANU Meet the Author series

Amy Remeikis, one of Australia's leading political journalists and incisive cultural commentators, will be in conversation with Virginia Haussegger on Amy’s new book, Screw Nice, a powerful examination of how the politics of civility attempts to shut down debate.

6pm, Thursday 6 August 2026
Tangney Rd, Cinema, Cultural Centre Kambri
(ANU Building 153), Acton, ACT, 2601

Amy Remeikis, one of Australia's leading political journalists and incisive cultural commentators, will be in conversation with Virginia Haussegger on Amy’s new book, Screw Nice, a powerful examination of how the politics of civility attempts to shut down debate. The imbalance between those in power and those who oppose injustice is growing. And yet, to stifle argument, those who hold all the power use demands for civility as weapons, to control discussion and negate the legitimacy of differing opinions.

To be heard, you must be polite and follow the rules. But those rules are different, depending on your income, religion, social status or gender. At a time when wars are killing civilians in obscene numbers; when women are being murdered every week by someone close to them; when politicians are reinventing history to suit their agendas; and when science is telling us we have to do something to protect the planet, the politics of civility is a tool used by those in power to suppress marginalised voices. It discredits those whose perspectives we need to hear. It is stifling important information. But when lies are treated as truth, the only thing we can do is speak up and screw nice.

Amy Remeikis masterfully illuminates the personal and the public to hold a mirror up to our society, political systems and treatment of those who don't hold political or financial power to show us the time for being silenced has to end.

Amy Remeikis is the Chief Political Analyst at The Australia Institute and a contributing editor for The New Daily. Amy has extensive experience as a journalist, author and as a former political reporter for The Guardian Australia. Amy regularly appears in national media and is the author of On Reckoning and Where it All Went Wrong.

Virginia Haussegger AM is an award-winning television journalist, writer and commentator, whose media career spans 30 years. Virginia is Deputy Chair of the media think-tank PIJI, the Public Interest Journalism Initiative and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra’s News & Media Research Centre.. Her latest book is Unfinished Revolution: The Feminist Fightback.

The vote of thanks will be given by award-winning journalist Alex Sloan AM, 2017 ACT Citizen of the year

Books will be available for signing from 5.30pm and again after the event. 

Additional information:

Registration is required for this event.

Accessible parking spaces are available around campus should you require them.

By registering for this event, you are accepting our privacy policy.

A podcast will be made available after the event.

Register here

Free Event: Registration is required

View Event →