Centre News
New Book Publication!
How Do We Think About Population in the Anthropocene? Alison Bashford, Duncan David, David Nally The “Great Acceleration” describes a set of interrelated human-driven transformations of Earth’s systems, including the eightfold population growth since 1800. Yet ideas about population in the epoch many…
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Populating Global History Biopolitics/Geopolitics/Cosmopolitics
A Final Laureate Symposium – 07 August 2026, State Library of NSW, Dixson Room Populating Global History brings together the many historians who have worked across Alison Bashford’s research projects at UNSW Sydney since 2019. How have modern histories of land,…
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Decoding the Hand shortlisted for Pickstone Prize
Professor Alison Bashford’s book The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution (Allen Lane/University of Chicago Press) has been longlisted for two awards: the 2023 Cundill History Prize and the 2023 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.
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Articulating Opposition: Population Management and Practices of Resistance
Laureate Centre for History and Population, Morven Brown, lv.3, Room 353, 11 & 12 Dec 2025 This two-day academic workshop invites early career researchers to critically and creatively examine the concept of opposition from a historical perspective, with a focus…
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Wastelands in Modern World History
Laureate Centre for History and Population, 22 & 23 Oct 2025 (Part 1) – 11 Nov 2025 (Part 2) Wilderness and waste, desert and empty space. Across the modern world, empires and nation-states have mobilised the idea of “wastelands” to…
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Sheep, Cattle and Populations in the Australian Colonies, 1815 to 1856
Laureate Centre for History and Population, 26 Sep 2025 Histories of pastoralism and histories of populations represent two central streams within the historiography of Australia, New Zealand Aotearoa, and the British Empire more broadly. Both livestock (living and as commodified…
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Geographies of Population History: East Asia + South Asia
Laureate Centre for History and Population, 12 Aug – 15 Sep 2024 The Laureate Centre for History and Population is hosting four stellar scholars of reproductive politics in Asia. As part of these visits, we are organizing a series of…
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How do we think about Population in the Anthropocene?
Jesus College, Cambridge, UK, 2 – 4 July 2024 The interdisciplinary research group who first described a “Great Acceleration,” c. 1950, produced a suite of now-famous graphs depicting large-scale socio-economic changes. Significantly, the first displays world net population growth. In…
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New Appointments: Postdoctoral Fellows
The Laureate Centre for History & Population is delighted to welcome three new postdoctoral fellows. They will be joining us from July 2024. Matthew Birchall Matthew Birchall specialises in British imperial history, with a particular focus on chartered companies in…
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Call for Contributions to “Populating the 1980s: a Decade Revisited” Edited Volume
Contributions now invited for the Populating the 1980s: A Decade Revisited edited volume. Contact a.sarcar@unsw.edu.au for more information. About: For global negotiations over the population, the 1980s was a bridging decade. In the 1970s, population control through “family planning” as…
Keep readingPopulating the 1980s: Catch up on the series so far
Our “Populating the 1980s: A decade revisited” online seminar series has wrapped for 2023, and will be returning in March 2024. The series, convened by Dr Aprajita Sarcar, considers the afterlife of demographic transition in different political geographies. Asking whether…
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An Intimate History of Evolution wins the 2023 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award
Centre Director Alison Bashford’s latest book, An Intimate History of Evolution: The story of the Huxley family has won the 2023 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award. The Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award recognises works that combine…
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July @ the Laureate Centre
In July 2023, the Laureate Centre was delighted to welcome distinguished visiting scholars Prof Duncan Kelly & Prof David Nally from Cambridge, who joined conversations on population & the anthropocene, and helped workshop papers with Laureate Centre & affiliated researchers.…
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Prize Nominations For The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution
Professor Alison Bashford’s book The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution (Allen Lane/University of Chicago Press) has been longlisted for two awards: the 2023 Cundill History Prize and the 2023 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.
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What We Are Talking About: Population Through the Camera
At the recent “Population Through the Camera” workshop, organised by the Laureate Centre for History and Population at UNSW, scholars from diverse backgrounds discussed how photography sees and unsees populations within a landscape. The workshop concentrated on the Asia-Pacific region,…
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