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Politics and History at Swinburne

Politics and history

Staff from the politics and public policy area teach in the following areas:

Staff in politics and history

Person Position Research interests
Professor Brian Costar Professor
(Available to supervise to Doctoral level)
  • Electoral systems, parliaments, political parties state and regional politics
  • Parliamentary and Executive Privilege in the UK and Australia
  • Citizenship and electoral enrolment
  • The politics of parliamentary Opposition
  • Political money
Professor Jock Given Professor
(Available to supervise to Doctoral level)
  • Communications law and policy, especially digital TV, radio, film
  • Media history, especially the history of Australian, New Zealand and trans-national media enterprises
  • International trade in audiovisual services
  • Telecommunications, including broadband and universal service
Dr Julie Kimber Lecturer - Politics and Public Policy
(Available to supervise to Doctoral level)
  • Social justice, politics and citizenship
  • Labour and social history
  • Industrial and criminal legal history
  • Political history and biography
Associate Professor Michael Leach Associate Professor - Politics and Public Policy
(Available to supervise to Doctoral level)
  • The Politics of Timor-Leste
  • Nation-building in the Asia-Pacific
  • Comparative Immigration and Asylum Policy
  • The Politics of Melanesia & Pacific
  • Australian Political History
  • Comparative Politics
Dr Peter Love Senior Lecturer - Politics and Public Policy
(Available to supervise to Doctoral level)
  • Australian Political History
  • Industrial Relations
  • Labour and Economic History
  • Biography
  • History of Australian Higher Education
  • History of working-class culture
Professor Klaus Neumann Professor
(Available to supervise to Doctoral level)
  • Social and public memories of the Nazi past in Austria and Germany
  • Historical justice in perpetrator societies
  • The role of compassion in politics
  • Refugee and asylum seeker regimes
  • The impact of refugee histories and memories on host societies
  • Australia as a place of exile for German-speakers
  • The migration of Mauritians, Ceylonese Burghers, Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmese to Australia
  • The White Australia policy
  • World War II internment in Australia
  • Australia's and New Zealand's responses to refugees (since the 1930s)
  • Maori and forestry in New Zealand
  • Postcolonial histories
  • History-making in Papua New Guinea
Dr Lorenzo Veracini Senior Research Fellow
(Available to supervise to Doctoral level)
  • Colonial and postcolonial studies
  • Settler colonialism
  • Settler societies
  • Comparative and transnational history
  • Australian history and historiography