Dr Peter Stanley

Peter Stanley

Dr Peter Stanley was appointed Director of the Centre for Historical Research in early 2007. He is best known as a military social historian and was principal historian at the Australian War Memorial for 20 years.

Peter's publications include Tarakan: an Australian Tragedy and Quinn's Post, Anzac, Gallipoli. He has also written extensively on British imperial history, through The Remote Garrison and White Mutiny, and on medical history in For Fear of Pain: British Surgery 1790-1850.

Peter has made many contributions to historical interpretation in print and broadcast media, including the television series Revealing Gallipoli.

His future research projects include books looking at 20th century Australia through a study of the lives of a group of Great War soldiers at Mont St Quentin, ventures into the social history of migration and the lives of people in South Australia, and a study of the bushman-storyteller Bill Harney.

Peter's 19th book, Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942, is due to be published by Penguin in July 2008.

Tel + 61 2 6208 5022
Fax + 61 2 6208 5130
Email p.stanley at nma.gov.au

• Between Victory and Death: Mont St Quentin and Old Australia, forthcoming from Scribe, Melbourne, 2009.
• To the Far Side of Tears: Micky Burn and the St Nazaire Commandos, in progress.
• Fortitude, a popular edition of For Fear of Pain, in progress.
• Simpson's Donkey. Children's book, in progress.
• '"Billarni" – the life and times of Bill Harney'.

Australian military and social history 1788-1945; history of surgery; imperial military social history, especially colonial Australia and nineteenth-century India.

Higher degree candidates under Peter's supervision are:

• Victoria D'Alton, Australian Defence Force Academy, MA: Australian VCs on the Western Front
• Katie Meale, Australian National University, PhD: Leadership in captivity
• Aaron Pegram, Australian National University, PhD: Australian prisoners of war on the Western Front
• Sharon Peoples, Australian National University, PhD: British military fashion in the 18th century.

P Stanley, Quinn's Post: Anzac, Gallipoli, Allen & Unwin Australia, Sydney, 2005.

P Stanley, Whyalla at War 1939-45, Whyalla City Council, Whyalla, 2004.

P Stanley, For Fear of Pain: British Surgery 1790-1850, Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam, in association with the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, 2003.

P Stanley, White Mutiny: British Military Culture in India, 1825-75, Christopher Hurst & Co, London/New York University Press, 1998.

P Stanley, Tarakan: an Australian Tragedy, Allen & Unwin Australia, Sydney, 1997.

M Johnston & P Stanley, Alamein: the Australian Story, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2002 (new edition, 2006).

P Stanley, 'Threat made manifest', Griffith Review, Spring 2005, pp. 13-24.

P Stanley, '"The men who did the fighting are now all busy writing": Australian post-mortems on defeat in Malaya and Singapore, 1942-45' in B Farrell and S Hunter (eds), Sixty Years On: the Fall of Singapore Revisited, Eastern Universities Press, Singapore, 2003.

P Stanley, '"Great in adversity": Indian prisoners of war in New Guinea', Journal of the Australian War Memorial, 2002, no. 37.

P Stanley, 'Diversity of visitors, diversity of interpretation: the Australian War Memorial's Second World War gallery', in D McIntyre and K Wehner (eds), National Museums Negotiating Histories, Canberra, 2001.

P Stanley, 'Military culture and military protest: the Bengal Europeans and the "White Mutiny" of 1859', in J Hathaway (ed.), Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention: Mutiny in Comparative Perspective, Prager, Westort, 2001.

P Stanley, '"A horn to put your powder in": interpreting artefacts of British soldiers in colonial Australia', Journal of the Australian War Memorial, Oct 1988, pp. 13-29.

P Stanley, 'Soldiers and fellow countrymen in colonial Australia', in M Browne and M McKernan, Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1988.