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Lecturer in History, College of Arts, Victoria University

Lachlan is a Sessional Staff member at Victoria University, Melbourne. Since 2011, he has also taught at Swinburne University of Technology. He is an historian whose research interests include anti-communism, security and intelligence, nuclear power and weapons, Aboriginal affairs and Australian political history.

Lachlan completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in 2006, receiving first class honours for his thesis, titled The Petrov Affair and the 1954 Election. His PhD thesis, completed in 2010, was titled Australian Cold Warrior: the Anti-Communism of W. C. Wentworth.

His 2010 paper (published in 2011), Fighting the Enemy Within: Anti-Communism and Aboriginal Affairs, was shortlisted and commended by the judges in the 2010 AHA/CAL Postgraduate History Prize. In 2011 he was awarded the Most Outstanding Final Year Research Student Award in Victoria University's School of Social Sciences and Psychology. He was also awarded the 2011 Moran Award for the History of Australian Science Research, administered by the Australian Academy of Science at the Basser Library, Canberra. He has published several academic journal articles on Australian politics during the Cold War, often with a focus on W. C. Wentworth - the subject of his PhD thesis.

He is currently working on a book with Ross Fitzgerald on communist espionage in Australia, titled 'A Dozen Soviet Spies Down Under', to be published by Connor Court (Melbourne) in 2015.

Experience

  • 2010–present
    Sessional Lecturer, Victoria University
  • 2011–present
    Sessional Lecturer, Swinburne University

Education

  • 2010 
    Victoria University, Doctor of Philosophy
  • 2006 
    Victoria University, Bachelor of Arts (Honours)

Publications

  • 2013
    ‘Patronised servants’: Australian scientists in the 1940s, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society
  • 2013
    A House Committee on Un-Australian Activities? An Alternative to the Dissolution Act, Australian Historical Studies
  • 2011
    Anti-Communism Undermined: The Uncomfortable Alliances of W. C. Wentworth, Melanie Nolan (ed.) Labour History and its People: Papers from the Twelfth National Labour History Conference
  • 2011
    Fighting the Enemy Within: Anti-Communism and Aboriginal Affairs, History Australia
  • 2009
    Cold War Collusion: ASIO and W. C. Wentworth, Bobbie Oliver (ed.), Labour History in the New Century

Grants and Contracts

  • 2014
    Funding to attend Nuclear Experts and Nuclear Expertise in a Global Context after 1945, Berlin, Germany
    Role:
    Presenter
    Funding Source:
    Humboldt University, Berlin
  • 2011
    Moran Award for the History of Australian Science Research
    Role:
    Funding Source:
    Australian Academy of Science
  • 2007
    Victoria University Postgraduate Award
    Role:
    PhD Candidate
    Funding Source:
    Victoria University