Profile
Name: Dr Libby Robin
Title: Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia
Qualifications: BA(Hons), BSc, PhD, Dip Ed (Melb).
Expertise: environmental history, history of science, history in museums
Current projects:
- Expertise for the future - histories of global change science
- A history of scientific endeavour in Australia's drylands
- The culture of weeds - A history of attitudes to ferals and weeds in settler societies.
- Conservation history and policy – community history with applications for environmental policy.
Contact details
Dr Libby Robin
Centre for Historical Research
National Museum of Australia
GPO Box 1901
CANBERRA ACT 2601
AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 2 6208 5373
Email: l.robin@nma.gov.au
Location
Libby is located at NMA from Jan-June each year.
Medical Superintendent's Building
National Museum of Australia
Lawson Crescent
Acton Peninsula
CANBERRA ACT 2600
AUSTRALIA
She can be contacted all year round at libby.robin@anu.edu.au.
Quick link
Dr Libby Robin is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Historical Research.
She is an environmental historian, jointly appointed to the National Museum of Australia and the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University.
Current activities and research
History of Science in Australia
Historical Records of Australian Science (Co-editor, with RW Home)
Expertise for the Future
An international collaboration with Sverker Sörlin, KTH, Stockholm; Paul Warde UEA; Cambridge Centre for History and Economics; ANU and Stockholm Resilience Center as part of the IHOPE initiative. Four workshops (Norwich 2009, Harvard 2009, Canberra 2010, Stockholm 2010); conference (Bellagio 2012); anthology of readings about the history of global change science Environmental Futures (likely 2013); monograph Nature's Future (for 2014).
A history of scientific endeavour in Australia's drylands
With MA Smith (archaeologist) and SR Morton (ecologist) and the Songlines/NMA team (led by H Morphy) ARC LP 110200742 (2011-2014).
The Culture of Weeds
A joint project with Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne (Joslin Moore, Sharon Willoughby) and National Museum of Australia. Proposal for two books, several joint papers and conference presentations, PhD scholar, Postdoctoral fellow (in prep.)
See also Libby Robin, Robert Heinsohn and Leo Joseph (eds) Boom and Bust: Bird Stories for a Dry Country, Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing, 2009.
Conservation history and policy
Libby Robin, Christopher R. Dickman and Mandy Martin (eds) Desert Channels: The Impulse to Conserve, Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing. 2010
Biological invasions and national identity
Comparative studies between Australia and South Africa (with Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa). See: Carruthers, Jane and Libby Robin, 'Taxonomic imperialism in the battles for Acacia: Identity and science in South Africa and Australia', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 65(1), 48-64.
Science and National Identity
Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, Sydney, UNSW Press. 2007
Interdisciplinary environmental studies
Grafton, R. Q. Libby Robin and R. J. Wasson (eds), Understanding the Environment: Bridging the Disciplinary Divides, Sydney: UNSW Press. 2005
The scientific aesthetic
Mandy Martin, Libby Robin and Mike Smith, Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future, Mandurama: Mandy Martin with Land and Water Australia. 2005
Climate Change and the humanities
Robin, Libby and Will Steffen,'History for the Anthropocene', History Compass, 5(5)(2007): 1694–1719; doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00459.x; Sherratt, Tim, Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds) A change in the weather: Climate and culture in Australia, Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press. 2005
History of Ornithology in Australia
Libby Robin, The Flight of the Emu: A hundred years of Australian ornithology 1901-2001, Carlton: Melbourne University Press. 2001
Background
Libby Robin has worked as a historian in museums, universities and the public sector for 20 years. Her doctoral training was in the history of ecological science and public applications of this in conservation, and she has developed research interests since in global environmental history, ornithology, the history of environmental political movements and museology. She has supervised over 20 doctoral projects in a wide range of subjects. She is convenor of the Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network.
Publications
Best articles
Libby Robin, 'Wattle', in Melissa Harper and Richard White, Australian Symbols, Sydney UNSW Press/NMA Press (forthcoming 2009).
Libby Robin, 'Battling the Land: Environment and Identity in Settler Australian Society' in PAN (Philosophy, Activism, Nature) 2009.
Libby Robin and Mike Smith, 'Australian Environmental History: Ten Years On', Environment and History, vol. 14 no. 2, 2008, pp. 1-4.
Libby Robin, 'The Eco-humanities as literature: a new genre?', Australian Literary Studies, 23(3), 2008, pp. 290-304.
Libby Robin, 'New science for sustainability in an ancient land', in Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde (eds), Nature's End: History and the Environment, Palgrave MacMillan, London and New York (forthcoming 2009).
Libby Robin and Mike Smith, 'Science in place and time: archaeology, ecology and environmental history', in Chris Dickman, Daniel Lunney and Shelley Burgin (eds), Animals of Arid Australia: Out on their Own?, Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Mosman, 2007, pp. 188-196.
Libby Robin, 'Ecology and identity: Australians caring for deserts', in David Callahan (ed.), Australia: Who Cares?, Australian Public Intellectual Network and European Association for the Study of Australia, Perth, 2007, pp. 85-105.
Libby Robin, 'Home and away: Australian sense of place', Australian Humanities Review, 2007, issue 41.
Libby Robin and Will Steffen, 'History for the Anthropocene', History Compass, August 2007, vol. 5, iss. 5, pp. 1694-1719.
Libby Robin, 'Weird and wonderful: the first objects of the National Historical Collection', reCollections, 2006, vol. 1, no. 1.
Libby Robin, 'Migrants and nomads', in Tim Sherratt, Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds), A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2005, pp. 42-53.
Libby Robin, 'The platypus frontier: eggs, Aborigines and empire in nineteenth-century Queensland', in Deborah Rose and Richard Davis (eds), Dislocating the frontier: essaying the mystique of the Australian outback, ANU E Press, Canberra, 2005, pp. 99-120.
Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths, 'Environmental history in Australasia', Environment and History, 2004, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 439-74.
Libby Robin, 'Collections and the nation: science, history and the National Museum of Australia', Historical Records of Australian Science, 2003, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 251-89.
Libby Robin, 'Nationalising nature', Journal of Australian Studies, 2002, vol. 73, pp. 13-26.
Achievements
Guest Professor, Division of History of Science and Technology, Faculty of Architecture and Building, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm. (2011-2014)
Winner, Whitley Medal 2009 for Landmark Zoological Publication (Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales) (2009) for Boom and Bust: Bird Stories for a Dry Country
Winner, New South Wales' Premier's History Awards, Australian History Prize (2007) for How a Continent Created a Nation
Winner, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, inaugural biennial Science Writing Prize (2003) Flight of the Emu
Crosbie Morrison Memorial Lecturer 'Nature and Nation', Museum Victoria (2002)
Professional commitments
Convenor, Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network (since 2000)
Editor and Board Member Historical Records of Australian Science, journal of the Australian Academy of Science, Canberra (Book Review editor from 1999-2009 and Board member since 1999)
National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science, Australian Academy of Science (since 2004)
International Advisory Board, Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE). Stockholm Resilience Center (since 2011)
Board: International Consortium of Environmental History Organisations (ICEHO) (Vice-President) (since 2011)
International Advisory Board, World History of Science Online, University of Oklahoma (since 2010)
International Advisory Board, Center for Art+Environment, Nevada Museum of Art (since 2009)
Editorial Board, Environment and History, (White Horse Press, UK) (since 2005)
National Common Names Committee (Birds Australia) (since 2005)
Gippsland Heritage Journal, Advisory Board Member, annual peer-reviewed journal published by Kapana Press, Bairnsdale, Victoria. (since 1999)
Commonwealth Working Party, Australian Dictionary of Biography (since 1997)
Editorial Board, Australian Humanities Review (since 1997)