B.A. (Hons), Ph.D, FSA Scot
@benvwilkie
bvwilkie@gmail.com
Building on my previous research on the Scots in Australia, this project focuses on the comparative history of Scottish overseas commerce, trade, and enterprise and its role in the expansion and consolidation of the British Empire in Australasia, Africa, and the Pacific. In 2019 I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, supported by the William Lind Foundation, where I worked on a project entitled Commerce, colonisation, and Scotland’s civilising mission in central Africa: A case study of the African Lakes Corporation in the late-19th century. This fellowship supported research in the archives of the Glasgow-based African Lakes Corporation, which operated in Nyasaland, or modern-day Malawi, from the late-nineteenth century. Other firms included in this project are the Scottish Australian Investment Company, the Clyde Company, and the Australasian New Hebrides Company.
My 2014 PhD thesis at Monash University explored the historical relationships between Scotland, Australia, and the British Empire, and my earlier honours dissertation investigated Scottish migrants and their culture in the Western District of Victoria. My first book, The Scots in Australia 1788-1938, was published by Boydell Press in November 2017 with the support of the Scottish Historical Review Trust. It broadly examined the history of Scottish migration to and settlement in nineteenth and twentieth century Australia, along with explorations of culture and identity, businesses and networks, politics, and the Scottish role in the dispossession of Indigenous Australians. I have also published widely in academic and popular journals on the subjects of the Scots in Australia.
Following on from my environmental history of the Gariwerd or Grampians ranges in western Victoria, I am developing a new project that considers the geological, environmental, economic, and social histories of the Newer Volcanics Province of Australia. Some preliminary thoughts can be found in my unpublished research note, 'Western Kulin Volcanic Traditions: Ethnographic Evidence from the Newer Volcanics Province of Victoria', available to read here.
My second book, Gariwerd: An Environmental History of the Grampians, is an environmental and social history of the Grampians-Gariwerd mountain ranges in the Western District of Victoria, and is to be released by CSIRO Publishing in April 2020. It explains the geological and ecological significance of the Gariwerd mountains and Grampians National Park, and describes over 20,000 years of Indigenous Australian history in and around Gariwerd, including archaeology and traditional ecological knowledge. The book explores the history of colonisation and its impact on both Indigenous Australians and the environment, and details the rise of science, industry, and tourism in Gariwerd. It considers the creation of the Grampians National Park in the twentieth century and examines current issues to do with the park. Research from this project published as 'Rights, reconciliation, and the restoration of Djabwurrung and Jardwadjali names to Grampians-Gariwerd' in the Victorian Historical Journal was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society of Victoria's inaugral John Adams Prize for best article on Victorian history in 2017-18.
Supported by a 2016-17 Australian Army History Unit Research Grant for the project Nature conservation and militarised landscapes: A case study of Puckapunyal since the First World War, I have researched the history of environmental changes at military training areas in Australia and the broader evolution of sustainable land management practices in the Australian defence forces. This project resulted in a number of publications and papers, including ‘Defending nature: Animals and militarised landscapes in Australia’, in Nancy Cushing and Jodi Frawley (eds), Animals Count: How population size matters in animal-human relations, Routledge, 2018; 'Bombs and biodiversity: A case study of military environmentalism in Australia’, Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History, vol. 15, 2016; 'Australian environments in war and peace: Toward an environmental history of Australia's defence estate', Australian Historical Association Conference, Ballarat, July, 2016; and 'Defence white paper shows Australian forces must safeguard nature', The Conversation, February 26, 2016.
As a Research Assistant in the Macquarie Business School's Department of Management, I am contributing to a project investigating interlocking directorates in the top 100 Australian financial and industrial firms throughout the twentieth century. This project aims to understand the nature and effect of interlocking directorates. It investigates the broad structure of director networks for a series of benchmark years and explores the influence of these connections on knowledge and strategy within firms. By using an innovative combination of methods, this project seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of director networks within the Australian context while also disentangling the complex long-run effects of firm connections on knowledge.