Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society

Dates: 17-20 November 2024

Faculty of Law and Justice, UNSW Sydney

Conference Theme: Change and Continuity

Due date for conference abstracts:  31 July

Acceptance date:  15 September

Program: To be advised later in the year

Format: In-person/Face to face; some online attendance will be available.

Registration: Registration will be opened later in the year.

Keynote speakers: Professor Lisa Ford, School of Humanities & Languages, UNSW Sydney; Professor Warren Swain, Auckland Law School, University of Auckland|Waipapa Taumata Rau; and Professor John Page, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney

Accommodation: Accommodation options in the Sydney CBD and Eastern Suburbs will be advised before registration later in the year.

An Early Career Researcher (ECR) session will be held on 17 November 2024. If you are an ECR, please indicate your interest in attending the session on your submission.

Call for Paper Guidelines

Papers are invited on any topic, but the conference organisers (Prof. Prue Vines, Prof. John Page and Dr. Henry Kha) particularly welcome abstracts that address the broad themes of ‘Change and Continuity’. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, and should be accompanied by a short biography (100 words). Panel submissions are also warmly encouraged. Submissions should be sent to anzlhs2024@gmail.com

Conference Theme

Conference abstracts are invited to engage with the themes, tensions, and dynamics of change and continuity across law and history.

Change and continuity are recurring themes in law and history, the inexorably shifting ebbs and flows as society and its laws adapt to the dynamic contours of space, place, and time; and the physical and metaphysical influences of context. Change presages reform, disruption, and transformation, while continuity assures of stability, permanence, or the perceived comfort of incremental ‘progress’. Change and continuity appear as polar opposites, and they often are, yet at times, they also complement each other, speaking to latent tensions that are both coherent and incoherent and compatible and incompatible, often at the same time.

Change and continuity also remind us of circularity and relativity. As the truism goes, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’, yet often, it seems that time speeds up (change) while on occasions, it passes more slowly (continuity). Or change and continuity are simply different gears on an erstwhile linear trajectory, where each co-informs and co-constitutes an ongoing confluence of legalities and histories.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts by 31 July. Please send them to anzlhs2024@gmail.com

Deadline for expressions of interest: 1 April 2024
Deadline for draft chapters: 1 February 2025
Proposed publication date: December 2026 (TBC)

The Australian Migration History Network seeks contributions to an edited volume to mark the 125th anniversary of Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act 1901.

Interested contributors should submit a chapter proposal of around 200 words to Jayne.Persian@unisq.edu.au by 1 April 2024. Please include the following information with your proposal: name, affiliation (if relevant), email address, and a 150-word bio.

For more information, see – https://amigrationhn.wordpress.com/2024/02/02/call-for-papers-on-the-125th-anniversary-of-the-immigration-restriction-act-1901/

Conference location and dates: University of Sydney, July 11-13, 2024

Deadline for Abstracts: January 31, 2024

For more information see – https://antipodes.city/2023/11/07/real-estate-agency-land-housing-and-finance-in-urban-and-planning-history/

The Sir Francis Forbes Society Prize for Australian legal history has been awarded for 2023. This prize is awarded for the best presentation by a higher degree research student or an early career researcher at the annual conference. This paper will be published, subject to the usual refereeing process, in law&history.

It is with great pleasure that we announce that the 2023 recipient of this prize is Ash Stanley-Ryan for the paper ‘Ka mua, ka Muri: He Whakaputanga, Concealed Indigenous Histories, and the Making of International Law’

This paper examines two competing histories of He Whakaputanga o te Rangatira o Nu Tireni, the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand, that is well-known in the field of Māori studies as a significant challenge to the legitimacy of the British colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand.  This study however, seeks to demonstrate how an understanding of international law is harmed by the systematic erasure of indigenous experiences and histories. It examines the pākehā stories of he whakaputanga as an act to secure Imperial interests; and Māori recollections of he whakaputanga as an affirmation of independence, in response to an ever-more intrusive world. 

This is a fascinating and engaging read that will interest a wide range of readers.  It makes a strong contribution to international law, comparative international laws and laws and histories, in its analysis of an encounter between indigenous and non-indigenous laws.  

Flinders University, Adelaide. Monday 1 – Thursday 4 July 2024

The Australian Historical Association (AHA) will host an ANZLHS legal history stream at the forthcoming AHA conference, Flinders University, Adelaide, 1-4 July 2024

Either individual papers (20 minutes) or themed panels (3 papers) are welcomed for the ANZLHS stream. Please submit paper and panel proposals by the deadline 23 February 2024 through the submission portal here.  Please ensure that you select ‘Australian & New Zealand Law & History Society’ as the stream to which you’re submitting.

ANZLHS papers and panels should speak to legal histories connecting to the conference theme ‘Home Truths’:

The Annual Prize was awarded at last week’s conference to Diane Kirkby:

Maritime Men of the Asia-Pacific: True-Blue Internationals Navigating Labour Rights, 1906-2006, Diane Kirkby with Lee-Ann Monk and Dmytro Ostapenko, Liverpool University Press, 2022.

This is a rich study of Australian maritime union struggles over pay and conditions at sea and on the wharves. Its particular strength is the breadth of its scope, in time (a century) as well as geography. While its focus is on Australian actors, it places them firmly in the context of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In doing so, the book draws out the interplay between national and international issues, and the relationship between Australian trade unions and those of India, Japan and China.

International legal history is rarely written as convincingly as the authors have managed to do here. They examine the interplay between the Navigation Acts, labour laws, immigration law, criminal law, and international law treaties and conventions. They also provide a subtle treatment of the interaction between racism and the protection of hard won Australian rights to pay and conditions.  The authors offer readers new perspectives on, and dimensions to, historical figures already well-known in labour history, as well as introducing a new cast of characters, fleshing out the human side of a complex story. The writing style in engaging and clear, drawing out the complexity of the issues under consideration with nuance and depth, while remaining highly readable. The book offers an outstanding contribution to union and labour history, as well as the history of the Asia-Pacific more broadly. The book thoroughly deserves the 2023 prize.

Congratulations to Diane, and thanks to the judges for their efforts!

You can attend either in person or virtually across 30 November-2 December 2023. Register here – https://www.anzlhsconference2023.com/fees-contacts

In-person registration $290

HDR in-person registration $160

Virtual registration $25

The program for the two-day conference is now available on the conference website and here –

University of Law – Hue University in Hue, Vietnam on July 25-26, 2024

The deadline for paper and panel proposals is 15 March 2024.

The University of Law – Hue University, with the support of the Transnational Legal History Group of the CUHK LAW’s Centre for Comparative and Transnational Law and the University of Oxford Programme in Asian Laws, will be organizing the Fourth Asian Legal History Conference on 25-26 July 2024. The conference is supported by the Asian Legal History Association. Previous Asian Legal History Conferences have been hosted, organized and supported by the University of Law at Hue University, the Faculty of Law at Thammasat University, the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore and the Faculty of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

The conference aims to bring together a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers and graduate students to share their research findings on topics relating to legal history in Asia. The conference is open to both scholars anywhere in the world working on Asian legal history, broadly understood, and scholars based in Asia working on any legal history-related subjects.

The conference will be held entirely in person. Participants will be responsible for the costs of travel and accommodation. The organizers will circulate a list of suggested hotels to selected presenters. The organizers will also provide two lunches, one dinner, and tea breaks.

See here for more details – https://www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/app/events/call-for-papers-the-4th-asian-legal-history-conference/

The ANZLHS would like to congratulate the following recipients of this year’s Kercher scholarships:

Isa Alade, Deakin University

Nadia Gregory, University of Wollongong

Benjamin Hingley, University of New England

Geoff Keating, University of Southern Queensland

Each scholarship is valued at AUD$500. This is a contribution towards the cost of an economy class airfare to attend the ANZLHS conference and/or accommodation. Recipients will also have the conference registration fee waived and will be awarded a year’s membership of the Society.

 Kate Bagnall and Peter Prince (eds), Subjects and Aliens: Histories of Nationality, Law and Belonging in Australia and New Zealand (ANU Press 2023): http://doi.org/10.22459/SA.2023 has now been published. Is free to download.

This volume draws attention to what we consider a persistent breach of the rule of law, namely the failure of white authorities to follow their own imposed rules about legal belonging, and the right to equal citizenship and protection that should have flowed from this.