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Head of Knowledge, Australian National Maritime Museum and Honorary Affiliate, University of Sydney

Dr Peter Hobbins is Head of Knowledge at the Australian National Maritime Museum and an Honorary Affiliate in the Department of History at the University of Sydney. His published work has included histories of medical research, venomous creatures, epidemics, quarantine, aviation and maritime history. Peter is the author of two books, 'Venomous Encounters: Snakes, Vivisection and Scientific Medicine in Colonial Australia' (2017) and, with Dr Ursula K Frederick and Associate Professor Anne Clarke, 'Stories from the Sandstone: Quarantine Inscriptions from Australia's Immigrant Past' (2016). Over 2018-19 Peter led a community history project to mark the centenary of the pneumonic influenza or 'Spanish' flu pandemic, and he was a key participant in the 2020 Australian Story episode on that calamity. In his current role, Peter leads the Maritime Museum's curatorial, library and publications teams, in addition to overseeing the acquisition of new objects for the National Maritime Collection.

Experience

  • 2021–present
    Head of Knowledge, Australian National Maritime Museum
  • 2020–2021
    Principal, Artefact Heritage Services
  • 2019–2020
    Senior Communications Officer, National Archives of Australia
  • 2016–2019
    ARC DECRA Fellow, Department of History, University of Sydney
  • 2016–2017
    Merewether Fellow, State Library of New South Wales
  • 2013–2016
    Research Associate, Department of History, University of Sydney
  • 2012–2012
    Associate Lecturer, Department of History, University of Sydney
  • 2011–2011
    Postgraduate Teaching Fellow, Department of History, University of Sydney
  • 2007–2010
    Freelance Medical Writer, Badger's Den
  • 2000–2006
    Director, Elixir Healthcare Education
  • 1999–2000
    Medical Writer, Alchemy Communications
  • 1997–1999
    Copywriter, Medicus
  • 1995–1997
    Senior Medical Writer, Oxford Clinical Communications

Education

  • 2014 
    University of Sydney, Doctor of Philosophy (History)
  • 2009 
    University of Sydney, Master of Medical Humanities with Merit
  • 1995 
    University of Melbourne, Bachelor of Science with Honours (Pharmacology)
  • 1995 
    University of Melbourne, Bachelor of Arts (English Literature and History and Philosophy of Science)

Publications

  • 2017
    (with Anne Clarke and Ursula K Frederick) “No complaints”: counter-narratives of immigration and detention in the graffiti at the North Head Immigration Detention Centre, Australia 1973–76, World Archaeology
  • 2017
    Venomous Encounters: Snakes, Vivisection and Scientific Medicine in Colonial Australia, Manchester: Manchester University Press
  • 2017
    Tending the body politic: health governance, benevolence and betterment in Sydney, 1835–55, Health and History
  • 2017
    Union Jack or Yellow Jack? Smallpox, sailors, settlers and sovereignty, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
  • 2016
    (with Alison Bashford, Anne Clarke and Ursula K Frederick) Geographies of commemoration: Angel Island, San Francisco and North Head, Sydney, Journal of Historical Geography 52, pp. 16–25
  • 2016
    (with Ursula K Frederick and Anne Clarke) Stories From the Sandstone: Quarantine Inscriptions from Australia’s Immigrant Past, Crows Nest: Arbon Publishing
  • 2016
    (with Anne Clarke and Ursula K Frederick) Sydney’s landscapes of quarantine, In Alison Bashford, ed., Quarantine: Local and Global Histories (Houndmills: Palgrave), pp. 175–94
  • 2016
    From Camels to cats: experimenting with medicine in the Australian Flying Corps, War & Society 35, no. 2, pp. 114–31
  • 2015
    (with Alison Bashford) Rewriting quarantine: Pacific history at Australia’s edge, Australian Historical Studies 46, no. 3, pp. 392–409
  • 2015
    “No bloody research”: bringing science to military medicine, In Jacqueline Healy, ed., Compassion and Courage: Australian Doctors and Dentists in the Great War (Melbourne: Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne), pp. 94–100
  • 2015
    A spur to atavism: placing platypus poison, Journal of the History of Biology 48, no. 4, pp. 499–537
  • 2014
    Imperial science or the republic of poison letters? Venomous animals, intercolonial exchange and national identity, In Robert Aldrich and Kirsten McKenzie, eds. Routledge History of Western Empires (Oxford: Routledge), pp. 285–98
  • 2014
    Invasion ontologies: venom, visibility and the imagined histories of arthropods, In Jodi Frawley and Iain McCalman, eds., Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities (Oxford: Routledge), pp. 181–95
  • 2013
    (with Hannah Forsyth) Mobilising medical knowledge for the nation, 1943–49, Health and History, 15, no. 1, pp. 59–79
  • 2013
    Spectacular serpents: snakebite in colonial Australia, In Jacqueline Healy and Kenneth D. Winkel, eds., Venom: Fear, Fascination and Discovery (Melbourne: Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne), pp. 37–46
  • 2013
    (with Alison Bashford) Science and medicine, In Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre, eds. The Cambridge History of Australia, Volume Two: the Commonwealth of Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 263–83
  • 2011
    “Immunisation is as popular as a death adder”: the Bundaberg tragedy and the politics of medical science in interwar Australia, Social History of Medicine 24, no. 2, pp. 426–44
  • 2010
    Isolated cases? The history and historiography of Australian medical research, Health and History 12, no. 2, pp. 1–17
  • 2010
    “Outside the institute there is a desert”: the tenuous trajectories of medical research in interwar Australia, Medical History 54, no. 1, pp. 1–28
  • 2010
    Serpentine science: Charles Kellaway and the fluctuating fortunes of venom research in interwar Australia, Historical Records of Australian Science 21, no.1, pp. 1–34
  • 2009
    The whole country is poisoned: framing disease mortality in the historiography of the South African War, War & Society 28, no.1, pp. 29–60
  • 2007
    (with Kenneth D. Winkel) The forgotten successes and sacrifices of Charles Kellaway, director of the WEHI, 1923–1944, Medical Journal of Australia 187, no. 11/12, pp. 645–8
  • 2007
    “Living in hell but still smiling”: Australian psychiatric casualties of war during the Malaya-Singapore campaign, 1941–42, Health and History 9, no. 1, pp. 28–55
  • 2006
    Compromised ethical principles in randomised trials of distant, intercessory prayer, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 2, no. 3, pp. 142–52

Grants and Contracts

  • 2017
    Heritage of the Air: how aviation transformed Australia
    Role:
    Chief Investigator
    Funding Source:
    Australian Research Council
  • 2016
    Black Box Re-order: technology, air safety and Australian airspace, 1938–68
    Role:
    Chief Investigator
    Funding Source:
    Australian Research Council

Professional Memberships

  • Australian and New Zealand Society for the History of Medicine
  • Australian Historical Association
  • Royal Australian Historical Society
  • Australian Society for History of Engineering and Technology
  • Civil Aviation Historical Society
  • Aviation Historical Society of Australia
  • History Council of New South Wales
  • Professional Historians Association
  • Royal Society of New South Wales

Research Areas

  • History And Philosophy Of Medicine (220205)
  • History And Philosophy Of Science (Incl. Non Historical Philosophy Of Science) (220206)
  • Australian History (Excl. Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander History) (210303)