Dr Peter Stanley

Peter Stanley

Dr Peter Stanley was appointed Head 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. He developed or curated many temporary and permanent exhibitions, and is interested in material culture as a source in historical interpretation.

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 recent television series Revealing Gallipoli, Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery, Monash and the 2008 4 Corners program 'The Great History War'.

In 2008 Peter published Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942, and A Stout Pair of Boots, a book explaining how to get the most out of battlefield research. He is working on two books about the Great War, a popular work on discipline called Bad Characters, and a long-term scholarly study of Australia during the Great War.

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

• Men of Mont St Quentin: between victory and death , Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2009.
• Commando to Colditz: Micky Burn's journey to the far side of tears - remembering the raid on St Nazaire, Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2009.
• Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny & Murder in the Great War, forthcoming from Pier 9, Sydney, 2010.
• Fortitude, a popular edition of For Fear of Pain, in progress.
• Simpson's Donkey, children's book, in progress.
• Book: Australia and the Great War.

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
• Aaron Pegram, Australian National University, PhD: Australian prisoners of war on the Western Front.

P Stanley, A Stout Pair of Boots: Exploring Australia's Battlefields, Allen & Unwin, sydney, 2008.

P Stanley, Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942, Viking Penguin, Melbourne, 2008.

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, 'Reflections of a public historian on a battle for Australia', Symposium: Newsletter of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, No. 40, Aug-Sep 2008, pp. 14-17.

P Stanley, 'The Gallipoli campaign: History and memory, myth and legend', in Deborah Gare & David Ritter, Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 311-71.

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.