It’s undoubtedly exciting news, but polar exploration has a poor record when it comes to diversity and we need to rethink the values and attitudes that underpin our fascination.
Portrait of French-Senegalese author David Diop whose novel has won the 2021 International Booker prize.
JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images
The French-Senegalese author’s novel At Night All Blood is Black is a harrowing and politically profound story of a Senegalese soldier fighting for the French in the first World War.
Australia has sent help to its nearest neighbour to deal with its COVID crisis. But to really forge the next chapter in that relationship, we need to understand the history between the two countries.
In the 1980s, CSIRO and its university collaborators set into motion a chain of events that would lead to the production of relenza, the first drug to successfully treat the flu.
A Royal Air Force De Havilland MosquitoI in flight on September 30 1944.
wikimedia/ww2incolor
Protected from development, natural landscapes worldwide are emerging from the violence of war.
Cover of the menu for the AIF Christmas Dinner, Hotel Cecil, London, in 1916. Illustration by Fred Leist.
Museums Victoria collection, donated by Jean Bourke
The British Mandate in Palestine had its origins in the end of World War I and lasted until 1948. What happened next has devastated the Middle East ever since.
A scholar takes a pilgrimage of the Western Front to try to comprehend the loss of lives of the First World War. Here British soldiers in a battlefield trench, c. 1915-1918.
Shutterstock
From the Swiss border to the English channel, a scholar describes his pilgrimage of the Western Front as a tribute to fallen soldiers and to learn more about the devastating loss of life.
Understanding the first world war is an exercise in comprehending the depth of human commitment to destruction, violence and resilience at a scale never experienced before 1914.
BNF France
A top class female footballer and tragic young soldier who was shot for ‘desertion’ despite fighting in some of WW1’s bloodiest battle fields are two hidden stories of The Great War.
Poppies at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
katatrix/shuttershock.com
The wildflowers that WWI soldiers encountered in Europe become symbols of remembrance and the fragility of life. The red poppy in particular is a powerful motif in Australian war art and photography.
The Navy converted to oil from coal a few years before the U.S. entered World War I, helping to solidify petroleum’s strategic status.
Naval History and Heritage Command
Before World War I, petroleum had few practical uses, but it emerged from the war as a strategic global asset necessary for national stability and security.
Some soldiers’ wounds in WWI were more mental than physical.
George Metcalf Archival Collection
Mental health trauma has always been a part of war. Treatments have come a long way over the last century, but we still don’t understand why the responses change for different people and times.
Modern high school students are learning two very different approaches to World War I.
Africa Studio / Shutterstock.com
High school students in America learn two very different perspectives on World War I in their U.S. and world history classes. But which of these competing viewpoints should take center stage?
The Yininmadyemi sculpture in Hyde Park celebrates Indigenous and Torres Strait Island service men and women. On Anzac Day, who are we honouring?
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Anzac Day is a big part of our national story. But the politics of memory mean the parts of this story that don’t fit neatly into the Anzac narrative are too often forgotten.
Scrapbook, G. Roberts (John Garibaldi), Book 7 Vol. 7a.
Museum Victoria, courtesy of State Library of Victoria
The Melbourne Museum’s World War I: Love & Sorrow exhibition, which opens this weekend, explores the various experiences of Victorians in the Great War, and the war’s effects on them. Museums have…