Professional Historian and History Consultancy Services Brisbane
Category: Blog
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Born Again: Persons and Movements (1974-2025)
Here is a panel of images of, technically, the same person, but also persons, plural, over time. On the left is me at the age of 13 years, on the right is me at age of 15 years. In the middle is me now. On the left is 1974 and on the right is 1976.…
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Changing the Minds of University Marketers
A Post at UQ Change Makers: Early this morning I had a conversation with an old undergraduate graduate on his need to retire the nostalgia and to think about the past and present with more intelligence (double meaning). It got me thinking about the historical ideas which have been swirling…
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A “Radical Program” has Spiraled Back with No Apology From The Institution That Had Attacked the Program in the 1970s.
All high praise should be made for Balmoral State High School for a program with very good principles of education. However, those principles were shut down by the Queensland Government when the same type of programs were introduced before. This Balmoral State High School program was the approach…
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Why Educative Culture cannot be dismissed by ‘antis’ and ‘cynics’: Donald Trump’s America
There are many good reasons one could argue, to the presumptuous ‘antis’ and ‘cynics’ — those who have dismissed the intellectual criticism, that their nonsense is actually against educational culture but it will fail as Donald Trump’s American Agenda. This reasoning from Chris Havergal, editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement, is one…
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When I’m Sixty Four
You’ll be older too. Ah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you. 15 July 2025, 8:35 A.M. AEST. “I am 64 years old.” When I’m Sixty Four (Release date: 01 June 1967) was written by Paul McCartney. It is said to be one of the first songs…
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Jackness: A Way of Approaching the World
When I was a small child, I had an imaginary friend, as children do. His name was “Jack”. It was not an extraordinary childhood memory, even having Jack Ford (1957-2025) as a dearest of friends. The notion of ‘Jack’ is very Australian. Kangaroo Jack is a 2003 American buddy action comedy film directed by David…
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A Eulogy for Jack
2025-07-07 A Eulogy for Jack Dr Jack Ford 4 May 1957 – 29 June 2025 My Dearest Friend… Acknowledgements to Brenda Biggs, Leela Ford, and Drs. Sue Keays, Chris Hanlon, Catherine Manathunga, Peter Overlack, Joanne Scott, Bernadette Turner, and Dr Jack Ford’s primary source data. “You just keep telling…
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Australian Universities Afraid of Open Communication and Intelligent Conversation
I must apologise for posting in what would seem a simple matter of emailing the universities and asking them to stop blocking me in my legitimate, academic communications. However, you have the ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem. In order to let the authorities know they have either made a mistake or a deliberate unjust action (with no justifiable…
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Where it started locally (Queensland): Ottoline Leyser, ‘We are destroying the diversity in our university system’
Jack Grove, Ottoline Leyser: ‘We are destroying the diversity in our university system’, Times Higher Education Supplement (THE), June 26, 2025. Comment: The THE article is in the UK natural science context, but where it began locally, for Australian humanities research, was when The University of Queensland got rid of boutique courses in…
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The Fit of Materialism, Spiritualism, and Accurate Compatibility
This research task is a more comprehensive version from a set of previous publication. It is an argument on how ideologies of Materialism, Spiritualism, and Accurate Compatibility can actually come together in opposition to hard materialism, vague spiritualism, and centralism inaccuracy. Hard materialism rides too heavily on disposition which is the relationship of ‘body’ and…