PODCAST · education
History Lab
by Impact Studios
History Lab || exploring the gaps between us and the past || This series is made in collaboration by the Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Episodes
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Scholars at Risk | Emergency Exit Bonus 2
In this bonus episode, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak speaks with Rob Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk, about the international network's work protecting the human rights of threatened scholars and defending academic freedom. Founded in 1999 at the University of Chicago by a group of academics...
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Bureaucratic violence today: an interview with Josh Bornstein | Emergency Exit Bonus 1
In this bonus episode, employment and human rights lawyer Josh Bornstein talks with Katherine Biber about the family history that shaped his career. Bornstein's grandparents left Poland in 1933 hoping to escape, finally securing passage to Melbourne in 1938, only for his grandmother to be...
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Displaced | Emergency Exit Ep3
In the aftermath of World War II, a charismatic Estonian man named Ilmar Tammelo arrived in Australia as one of more than 170,000 in the Displaced Persons Scheme. Trained as a lawyer and shaped by the upheavals of Soviet and Nazi occupation, Tammelo was assigned to manual labour in regional...
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Enemy Alien | Emergency Exit Ep2
Leonhard Adam’s life was twice transformed by bureaucratic categories. Declared a “non-Aryan” by Nazi rules, he was forced out of his career and from his home in Germany. He fled to England in search of safety, only to be classified as an “enemy alien”, a category formed in panicked haste as…
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Escape | Emergency Exit Ep1
The Nazi rise to power looms over Europe in the 1930s, causing an exodus of emigrants seeking refuge from persecution. But fleeing fascism involves contending with the arcane - and often arbitrary - immigration systems of other countries who turn a blind eye to the unfolding crisis. Some escape;...
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Introducing Emergency Exit
Coming October 1st - this special History Lab series explores the stories of European refugees who escaped Nazi persecution, only to confront new forms of exclusion through Australia’s legal and bureaucratic systems. Hosted by lawyer Josh Bornstein, with UTS researchers Katherine Biber, Sara Dehm...
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Musquito: the real story of a legendary colonial warrior
How do you tell the story of a "warrior" without flattening him into myth? Associate Professor Delia Falconer talks with historian Dr Naomi Parry Duncan about her new biography of Musquito — a warrior born around Port Jackson who lived through the first shockwaves of British invasion, was exiled…
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BONUS | Australia and Wikipedia: the bias in the map, from All That We Touch
Wikipedia doesn't set out to play favourites. But when a made-up Melbourne suburb has more history than real Australian places, something is shaping what gets written. Who - or what - decides which Australian places matter on Wikipedia? Hosts Heather Ford and Francesca Sidoti go looking, through…
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History Beyond Humans - Environmental Histories | Field Notes Ep4
Environmental history in Australia has moved from the margins to something close to the centre of the discipline — but the path there was longer and less obvious than it might appear. Jarrod Hore and Nancy Cushing map that path from different vantage points. Hore came of age as a scholar inside…
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Which China Do You Belong To? Chinese-Australian Histories | Field Notes Ep3
In this episode of Field Notes, historians Sophie Loy-Wilson and Mei-fen Kuo trace their paths into Chinese Australian history — one drawn by questions of racism and resistance, the other by the discovery of long-neglected Chinese-language newspapers and Qing Dynasty consular records. They…
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When the War is Over - Military Histories | Field Notes Ep2
Military history in Australia carries a weight that few other subfields do — it sits at the intersection of popular memory, national identity, and institutional commemoration in ways that make it both unusually accessible and unusually prone to distortion. Maggie Hutchison and Tom Rogers make a...
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52. Field Notes 2: Gendering the Past - Feminist Histories
Feminist history in Australia grew out of the women’s liberation movement and the theoretical challenge it posed to what counted as a proper subject for historical inquiry. Marilyn Lake and Clare Corbould trace that history from Kay Daniels’s 1975 national archival survey through the shift from...
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Ending Empires - Decolonisation Histories | Field Notes Ep1
What does decolonisation mean as a field of historical inquiry — and what does it demand of the historians who work in it? Jon Piccini and Angela Woollacott approach these questions from different generations and starting points. Woollacott came to postcolonial thinking through the new imperial...
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BONUS | Spirits of the Hoey: a rock 'n' roll archive
Before social media, before streaming, before algorithms decided what you'd hear next, Sydney had the street press — and the street press had the Hopetoun Hotel. In this episode, State Library Fellow Dr Liz Giuffre takes us inside her archival forays into On the Street and Drum Media, two free...
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BONUS | Fringe to Famous: building and sustaining creative industries
What made Australia's fringe cultural scene so generative in the 1980s — and what can it teach us about sustaining creative industries today? Tony Moore and Mark Gibson, co-authors with Chris McAuliffe and Maura Edmond) join Reg Mombassa (of Mental as Anything and Mambo fame) to launch their book...
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BONUS | Looking back: Drusilla Modjeska on women artists and what they saw
What happens to women's art when the world stops looking? That's the question at the heart of A Woman's Eye: Her Art, Drusilla Modjeska's book about a century of women artists who made radical, visionary work — and were then, largely, forgotten. Recorded live at Gleebooks before a packed house,...
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BONUS | The Last Tour: Ann Curthoys on Paul and Eslanda Robeson
In this episode of History Lab Live, we revisit a remarkable moment in Australian history: the 1960 visit of Paul Robeson and his wife, Eslanda Robeson. Paul Robeson was one of the most famous voices in the world — a singer who could fill concert halls, but also a lawyer, actor, athlete, and one…
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BONUS | Red Light, Green Light
In this episode from History Lab's archive, we stay in Darlinghurst with the award winning Red Light Green Light story from our Listen to Darlinghurst series. Going back to the street corners and safe houses where sex workers competed for customers in Darlinghurst in the 1980s, you will hear the...
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BONUS | Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis with Leigh Boucher and Tamson Pietsch
In this bonus episode, History Lab's Tamson Pietsch speaks with historian Leigh Boucher about the making of Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis — our three-part History Lab series exploring one of the most intense and concentrated episodes of loss, activism, and community life in Australian history (if…
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Faultlines and farewells | Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis Ep3
By the early 1990s, AIDS had reached its devastating peak in Darlinghurst. Obituaries filled the pages of the Star Observer, funerals became routine. Sickness and loss touched almost every friendship and street in the neighbourhood. In this episode, we move inside the hospitals, hospices and…
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Dancing as fast as we can | Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis Ep2
By the mid-1980s, the epidemic had taken hold in Darlinghurst. Fear was rising, homophobia was intensifying, and uncertainty shaped everyday life. Who had the virus? What did a positive test mean? And could the state be trusted with that information? In this episode, historian Leigh Boucher moves...
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Under the mirror ball | Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis Ep1
In the late 1970s and early 80s, Sydney’s Darlinghurst was the place to be for queer fun, sex and joy – all bubbling alongside a measure of danger. Packed bars, late-night gyms, house music, new friendships and the thrill of seeing and being seen. For many, this was the place to connect, to…
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Trailer | Welcome to Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis - a new History Lab Original
Australia’s response to HIV and AIDS is often remembered as a national success story — one shaped by public health policy, activism and community action. But how does that history change when you zoom in close? Darlinghurst’s AIDS Crisis is a three-part History Lab Original series with historian...
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BONUS | Vale Emeritus Professor Heather Goodall – Reflecting on a Life in History
Professor Heather Goodall was a pioneering historian whose research transformed understandings of Indigenous history, both in her field and in the broader community. Her work demonstrated a deep personal and professional commitment to social and environmental justice. In this episode we pay…
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BONUS | Making history: the 2025 federal election
In this episode of History Lab Live, historians and political analysts step back from the daily churn to review the May 2025 Australian federal election through a long lens: a decisive Labor victory built on an historically low primary vote, a further erosion of the major-party duopoly, and a...
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BONUS | From page to screen: the Idea of Australia
In this episode of History Lab Live, we bring you a conversation about the joys and challenges of translating Australian history to television. Writer and academic Julianne Schultz joins director Benjamin Jones and producer Darren Dale to discuss the process of adapting her book, The Idea of...
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BONUS | Kim Williams on Memory, Institutions and Freedom
History Lab Live presents the 2025 David Scott Mitchell Oration, delivered by Kim Williams at the State Library of New South Wales. A passionate advocate for the arts, media, and public institutions, Williams—currently Chair of the ABC—offers a sweeping and deeply personal reflection on the role…
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Caribbean Convicts | Caribbean Echoes Ep6
Caribbean Convicts weaves together the story of the Caribbean men who arrived in Sydney onboard the convict ship the Moffatt on August 30, 1836. Most had been enslaved, including William Buchanan, a Jamaican man transported for participating in the Christmas Day slave uprising in Jamaica in...
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Live from the Abercrombie with Zahra Newman and Alana Valentine | Caribbean Echoes Ep5
In this special episode of Caribbean Echoes, series producers Ben Etherington and Sienna Brown are in conversation with star Jamaican-Australian actress Zahra Newman and acclaimed playwright Alana Valentine. They discuss the making of the series and how performance emerged as a key theme across…
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BONUS | History Lab Live: The Last Outlaws
Hear author and historian Katherine Biber tell the story of Jimmy and Joe Governor, Wiradjuri and Wonnarua brothers, who in 1900 went on a murder spree that killed nine people and terrified countless others. The men were pursued for three months across 3000 kilometres, taunting their hunters with...
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Susannah Andrews: Jamaican Matriarch to Footy Legends and Mining Startups | Caribbean Echoes Ep4
What connects a VFL “Champion of the Colony” to a woman born enslaved in Jamaica? In 1919, Richmond footballer Vic Thorp won the league’s highest honour for the second time — the equivalent of today’s Brownlow Medal. But just a century earlier, his great-grandmother Susannah Andrews was enslaved…
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Nellie Small: Queer Black Caribbean-Australian Icon | Caribbean Echoes Ep3
Who was the Caribbean-Australian cabaret star who could bring down the house — and come back at racism with a joke? "Come sit by me, we don’t eat people anymore." Nellie Small was born in Sydney in 1900, just before the White Australia policy was introduced. She became one of the country’s most...
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From slavery to anticolonialism: John Maynard and Tony Birch on Black and Indigenous boxing | Caribbean Echoes Ep2
What does boxing have to do with anticolonial politics? How did the sport become a space where Black and Indigenous fighters in Australia pushed back against racism and empire? From Peter Jackson to Jack Johnson, Marcus Garvey to Les “Ranji” Moody, this episode explores how Black and Indigenous...
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Peter Jackson: Boxing Champion and Innovator in Black Self-Representation | Caribbean Echoes Ep1
Did you know that the most famous Australian in the world in 1890 was from the Caribbean? Peter Jackson was born in St Croix in the Caribbean in the years after slavery was abolished. He arrived in Sydney as a teenager and got noticed when he single-handedly fought off seven in a brawl at Wynyard...
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PREVIEW | History Lab is changing
History Lab is back—refreshed and reimagined. From now on, you’ll hear us in regular seasonal runs, dropping new episodes once or twice a fortnight over six to eight weeks. Each run will showcase a mix of formats: History Lab Originals – our signature investigative storytelling that digs into the...
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BONUS | Truth-telling: From Country to Classroom
What is the work of truth-telling? How is evidence collected? What happens next? What role should schools play in teaching Australia’s full history? Australia has completed its first, formal truth-telling process — the Yoorrook Justice Commission of Victoria. We joined Commissioner Travis Lovett…
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BONUS | Fishing for Answers
This special episode from our archives speaks to this year’s NAIDOC Week themes of strength, vision and legacy. Fishing for Answers explores the sophistication of the fishing practices of Eora women in Sydney Harbour, and asks, How can we hear from the women themselves and find out what their…
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Faces Today: Indigenous Artists Return the Gaze | Unsettling Portraits Ep3
Colonial portraits have long dictated how Indigenous people were seen. But Indigenous artists continue to challenge that power. Through satire, reinterpretation, and resistance, they’re using art to question history—and reshape the future. In this episode, historians Kate Fullagar and Mike...
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Facing Off: From Botany Bay to Aotearoa | Unsettling Portraits Ep2
In this episode, historians Kate Fullagar and Mike McDonnell revisit Bennelong’s portraits to examine how colonial art encountered Indigenous identity. Indigenous scholar Jo Rey, a Dharug woman, challenges these depictions, questioning their accuracy and impact. The conversation then expands to…
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Facing Empire: A Long History of Representing Others | Unsettling Portraits Ep1
Bennelong, a Wangal man of the Eora nation, was among the first Aboriginal people to travel to Europe and return. As a crucial interlocutor between his people and the British colonists, he navigated two worlds but the way he was depicted in colonial portraits raises complex questions. In one, he...
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Introducing: Unsettling Portraits
Can colonial depictions of Indigenous people tell us anything useful about the past? How do Indigenous people today feel about these enduring images? Unsettling Portraits is a three-part series exploring the history of portraiture and colonialism, alongside contemporary First Nations responses....
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What's coming in 2025? History Lab update and previews with Tamson Pietsch
If you're an old friend, hello and thank you for hitting play. If you're a new listener, welcome. History Lab, as many of you will know, was Australia’s first investigative history podcast. We've made five seasons so far, and our tagline is exploring the gaps between us and the past. And while…
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BONUS | On the Edge: a layered history of Sydney's South Head
A special History Lab episode with a soundwork that explores the history of Sydney's South Head, followed by an interview with the maker Sinead Roarty and Director of the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS, Tamson Pietsch. About the soundwork: On the Edge The Gap at South Head in…
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Introducing... Hey History!
We've got a new history podcast for you and the kids in your life, called Hey History! With immersive, sound rich storytelling and Australia's top historians and experts, dive into key events in our history. Find out... How did First Nations people learn on Country? How does learning happen…
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Last Drinks | Listen to Darlinghurst Ep6
In 1887 there were no less than 22 hotels in Darlinghurst. Over the next century and a half, the character, culture and clientele of Darlinghurst pubs evolved. This story explores the impact on Darlinghurst of two episodes of liquor licensing restrictions in NSW: six o’clock closing and the…
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Room With A View | Listen to Darlinghurst Ep5
Terraces, flats, squats, bedsits, mansions, towers, camps and hostels: in Darlinghurst, housing is a mixed bag. This audio story explores the range of lifestyles afforded by Darlinghurst’s dense diversity of dwellings. Voices Jan Cornall, former resident of Darlinghurst squats Paul Solomon,...
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Pandemic Times | Listen to Darlinghurst Ep4
At St Vincent's Hospital, the Sisters of Charity have been delivering care to the people of Darlinghurst since 1857. This audio story visits St Vincent’s during three historic public health emergencies: the Spanish Flu, the HIV/AIDS crisis and COVID-19. Image: Sister and nurse with home…
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Red Light Green Light | Listen to Darlinghurst Ep3
In the rapidly gentrifying Darlinghurst of the 1980s, a turf war raged over one of its earliest trades. In this story, we visit the street corners and safe houses where sex workers competed for customers, looked out for each other and stood their ground. Along the way, veterans of the…
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Eccentrics | Listen to Darlinghurst Ep2
Darlinghurst has always been a magnet and a haven for exiles and misfits. With writer and Darlo-phile Sunil Badami as guide, this audio story celebrates a handful of local characters and eccentrics, reflecting on the material conditions that enable unconventional people to thrive. Image: Hare...
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Lost Waterways | Listen to Darlinghurst Ep1
If you listen after rain, you can still hear the rush of water that used to flow from the sandstone ridge at the apex of Darlinghurst down to the harbour. This audio story goes in search of the creeks and cascades that sustained life and industry for Gadigal people, colonists and Chinese market...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does History Lab have?
History Lab currently has 69 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is History Lab about?
History Lab || exploring the gaps between us and the past || This series is made in collaboration by the Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney.
How often does History Lab release new episodes?
History Lab has 69 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to History Lab?
You can listen to History Lab on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts History Lab?
History Lab is created and hosted by Impact Studios.
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