Profile

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Research Areas

The histories of childhood, education, social welfare, medicine, mental illness, eugenics and disability in late-nineteenth and twentieth century Australia.

I consider the relationship between expert understandings of these areas and popular discourses: how everyday people adapted and responded to new scientific paradigms, and positioned their own experiences in relation to changing professional knowledge.

Education

PhD Candidate, Department of History, The University of Sydney

Submission expected 2013.

Thesis: ‘Help Us, Help Them: How Australian parents understood the problem of mental retardation and what they did about it, 1945-70.’

Supervisor: Professor Stephen Garton.

My doctoral research asks how Australian parents understood childhood disabilities in post-war Australia, and examines the measures they took to alleviate what they saw as a pressing social problem. Drawing on previously underutilised archives, the popular press, and a diverse range of private and government publications, my thesis sheds new light on questions of citizenship, welfare, and family life during and after the long 1950s.

BA (Hons), Class 1, The University of Sydney, 2007.

2007.

Thesis: ‘Caring for Their Children, Forever: Parent-run organisations for children with intellectual disabilities in New South Wales, 1950 – 1968.’

Supervisor: Professor Stephen Garton.

My honours thesis took a broadly interdisciplinary approach, examining the emergence of a group of non-government, parent-led organisations which opened schools, sheltered workshops, and other facilities for ‘mentally subnormal children’ in New South Wales after the Second World War. I considered broad changes in post-war conceptions of families, citizenship, voluntarism and the welfare state, and how these changes enabled parents and professionals to conceptualise ‘mental deficiency’ in new, often problematic, ways.

Examiners reports described the thesis as

a very original and insightful analysis of why parental groups emerged in post WWII Australia… [it] incorporates a range of approaches – welfare history, institutional history, and the social and cultural history of institutionalisation… This is an outstanding thesis, one of the best I have examined in the last 20 years.

Future Research

‘What is Normal? Lay understandings of deinstitutionalisation and normalisation programmes in late twentieth century Australia.’

‘”Off the Human Scrap Heap”: Civilian rehabilitation in post-WW2 Australia.’

Publications and Other Output

Publications (Peer Reviewed)

2011. Earl, Dave. ‘”A Group of Parents Game Together”: Parent advocacy groups for children with intellectual disabilities in post-WWII Australia.’ Health and History 13, no. 2: 84-103. <JStor stable url>

2009. Earl, Dave. ‘Help for Children and Their Families: Presenting “subnormal” and “spastic” children to the public in 1950s New South Wales.’ antiTHESIS 19: 148 – 61.

Publications (Other)

2010. Earl, Dave. ‘Weapons of the Boxer Uprising.’Signals no. 89, Dec 2009 – Feb 2010: 16-20. <Informit stable url>

Conference Papers

2012. ’”Habilitating the retarded”: Why sheltered workshops for “mentally retarded” Australians became “terminal”, 1945-1970,’ Connections: Australian Historical Association National Conference, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 9 – 13th July.

2011. ’”The Association for Aiding Educable Children Only:” Communities, power, and categories of disability in Australian voluntary organisations for disabled children, 1950 – 1965,’ Welfare and Power, Australasian Welfare History Workshop, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, 15 – 16th November.

2011. ’”Our Tasmanian Secretary laments that some teachers in that State… think all their pupils feeble-minded”: Eugenics, rural culture and conceptions of intellectual disability in Australia, 1911 – 1928,’ History at the Edge, Australian Historical Association Regional Conference, University of Tasmania, Launceston, 4 – 8th July.

2010. ’”A Group of Parents Came Together:” Parent advocacy groups for children with intellectual disabilities in post-WWII Australia,’ Australasian Disability Studies Symposium, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, 6 – 7th August.

2010. ’Revisiting Dr. Benn: The many meanings of intellectual disability in a murder,’ Reviewing History, Australian Historical Association National Conference, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, 9th July.

2010 ’”Homes for our Children”: The establishment of voluntary, parent-run institutions for intellectually disabled children and adults in post-WWII Australia,’ Australasian Social Welfare History Workshop, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 18th February.

2008. ’Help for children and their families: Presenting “subnormal” and “spastic” children to the public in 1950s New South Wales,’ Exhibitionism: Representing Identities, antiTHESIS Conference, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, 25th July.

Invited Papers & Public Talks

2013. ‘The Sad Story of John Carey Guest,’ What’s Hot in History, Royal Australian Historical Society, Sydney, Australia, 17th April. <Listen online>

2011. ’The Humanities Ph.D. at Sydney,’ Gateway: The PhD and its Future, St. Paul’s College, Sydney University, Australia, 8th August.

2009. ‘Researching Childhood Disability at the Library,’ National Library of Australia, Canberra, 23rd January.

Awards, Grants and Scholarships (Postgraduate)

2012               Dean’s Citation for Excellence in Teaching.

2012               Australian Policy & History CAL Internship.

2011                Department of History Grant-In-Aid.

2011                AHA CAL Bursary Workshop, Launceston.

2009                Summer Scholar, The National Library of Australia.

2008 & 2009   PRSS Postgraduate Travel research Scheme.

2008                Australian Postgraduate Award.

2008                Australian Pioneer’s Club Travel Bursary.

2008                Postgraduate Master Class, University of Tasmania.

Awards, Prizes and Scholarships (Undergraduate)

2007                University of Sydney Honours Scholarship.

2006 & 2007   Walter Reid Book Prize.

2006                Venour V. Nathan Essay Prize for Australian History.

2006                Sydney University Arts Association Prize in History III.

2006                University of Sydney Continuing Undergraduate Scholarship.

2005 & 2006   Dean’s List of Meritorious Students.

2005                George Arnold Wood Memorial Prize for History II.

Other Awards

2013               Australian Historical Association Featured Blog (January).

Professional Service

2013                                Co-convenor, “THATCamp #OzHA2013,” Wollongong.

2012 – Current           Book Reviewer, History Australia.

2011 – Current            Reviewer, History in the Making.

2010 – 2013                Postgraduate Representative to the Australian Historical Association.

2010                                 Co-convenor, “New Directions,” Sydney University History Postgraduate Conference.

2009 – Current            Book Reviewer, H-Disability, H-Net (
http://www.h-net.org/~disabil/
).

2008 – 2009                Postgraduate Representative to the History Department, University of Sydney.

Teaching Expertise

Australian social history.

Welfare history.

Social movements and protest.

Theory, method and historiography.

Transnational and international history.

Teaching Experience

Tutor & Guest Lecturer, Australian Social History

Semester 1, 2012.

Department of History, The University of Sydney.

Course Coordinator: Associate Professor Penny Russell.

As the sole tutor to this large (150+ student) course, I am responsible for co-ordinating tutorials for five classes, and undertaking all marking for this unit. The course has allowed me to utilise (and further develop) my broad, contextual understandings of Australian history.

A summary of student feedback about my teaching during the course is available on my teaching page. I’ve also reflected on my experiments with Twitter during the course.

I presented a guest lecture to the unit entitled ‘Suburban Domesticity: A dream come true?’. The lecture situated new understandings of masculinity, femininity, and ‘the Australian way of life’ in the broader context of post-Second World War Australia.

Guest Lecturer, Australian Social History

Summer School, 2012.

Department of History, The University of Sydney.

Course Coordinator: Mr Matthew Allen.

“The Rise of the Nuclear Family in Australia.”

In this course I presented a guest lecture to the Department’s Summer School. The lecture drew a broad-brush picture of changes in Australian society which led to nuclear families being understood as a fundamental element of the ‘Australian way of life’. Areas covered included the extension of compulsory education, suburban expansion, child welfare measures, and changing understandings of masculinities and femininities, and representations of families in Australian popular culture.

Tutor, The Spanish Civil War

Semester 2, 2009.

Department of History, The University of Sydney.

Course Coordinator: Associate Professor Judith Keene.

My duties in this position included tutoring three classes and marking approximately half of the unit’s assessments. This was a challenging, but fulfilling, unit to teach as it was outside my major area of expertise. Open-format feedback showed that my students were overwhelmingly pleased with the quality of my teaching and the course as a whole.

Professional Development

2009                  Tutor’s Development Course, Faculty of Arts, The University of Sydney.

2008 – 2009    Intern, Curatorial Department, Australian National Maritime Museum.

Professional Memberships

2008 – Current            Australian Historical Association.

2009 – Current            Disability Historians’ Association.

2010 – Current            History Council NSW.

2011 – Current            Australia and New Zealand Society for the History of Medicine.

Last updated June 2013.