Professor Iain McCalman

Professorial Research Fellow and ARC Federation Fellow

PhD (Monash)
Room 823 Brennan Building

+61 2 9036 5347

Research Areas

• Eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth British and European history
• Popular culture and low life
• Uses of media for history

Current Projects

• The life and work of Philippe de Loutherbourg, an eighteenth-century European artist, scientist, engineer and set-designer who pioneered revolutionary developments in the technology and culture of multimedia through the agency of 'spectacles.'
  ARC Federation Fellowship, 2003-2007
• Scientific voyages in the Antipodes: Thomas Huxley, John McGillivray and the Darwinian Revolution
  ARC Discovery Grant 2007-2009
• Seeing Change: Science, Culture and Technology in the Antipodes from the age of Darwin: a multi media research collaboration
  ARC Linkage Grant 2007-2010

Selected Publications

Darwin’s Armada: How four voyagers to Australasia won the battle for evolution and changed the world (Penguin, Australia; Norton, USA; Simon and Schuster, UK; 2009)

The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro (HarperCollins, Random House, UK 2003); published by HarperCollins US as The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason

Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age (1999; revised paperback ed., 2001)

Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840 (1988)

Exhibitions and Documentary Films

• Co-curator, ‘Gold. Lost Treasures, Hidden Histories’ at the National Museum of Australia, March 2001
• Curatorial adviser, ‘Cook and Omai: The Cult of the South Seas’, at the National Library of Australia, March 2001
• Historical consultant and participant, ‘The Ship’, six-part BBC2 re-enactment series of Cook’s first voyage, Aug 2002 and the History Channel, USA, in Oct 2002. An abbreviated version was screened by the ABC in Australia in 2003
• Co-curator, ‘A Savage Liberty: Europe and the Exotic’, Queensland Art Gallery, National Library of Australia, Victorian Art Gallery, Oct 2001- Jan 2002
• Historical consultant, ‘Bandits’, National Museum of Australia Exhibition, 2002-3
• Historical consultant, ‘Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson’, BBC Television, 2002-5
• Historical consultant for a BBC documentary on Omai, April 2003
• Historical consultant for the ABC for History Detectives, August 2003
• With Kim McKenzie, Jonathan Lamb and Alex Cook, ‘Scuttlebutt. A Reflection on a Maritime Re-Enactment’, short documentary, 20 mins, CRIO, 2004
• With Darran Edmundsun and Kim McKenzie, ‘The Eidophusikon, An Eighteenth-Century Movie Show’, multi-media performance at Vizlab, Australian National University and DVD, 2006
• Co-writer of scripts and presented four short historical films, ‘Norfolk Island: the Polynesians’; ‘Norfolk Island; The First Convict Settlement’; Norfolk Island: The Second Convict Settlement; Norfolk Island: The Pitcairners, Sydney: Look Films, editing still in process

Professional activities

• Officer AO, Order of Australia, for service to history and the humanities as teacher, researcher, author and through advocacy, advisory roles in academic and public sector organizations (2007)
• Chair, RQF Assessment Panel 12, Humanities
• Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (February 2005). Chaired an inquiry into Creativity and the Innovation Economy, presenting the report to Prime Minister and Cabinet in December 2005.
• President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (2001-2004)
• Director of the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University from 1995 until July 2003
• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Fellow of Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
• Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities