In my seventeen years in academe I authored and/or edited eight books and monographs, some fifty book chapters and journal articles, and dozens of working papers and other short pieces. A lot of words, which I doubt many people have read or, frankly, would want to read. Such is the lot of the writer.
My published writings relate mainly to Australian and international defence and security and cover the following broad topic areas:
The focus of this analysis has tended to be both critical and interrogative; posing questions, testing assumptions, challenging conventional and constituted 'wisdoms', and offering alternative ideas, perspectives and conceptual frameworks.
If you wish to see or delve into what I have written, click on the 'Publications' button above. If you would prefer to return to 'Graeme's pages', click on the button below.
As I researched and wrote about defence and security issues, I became increasingly interested in how Australia's policies and prescriptions have and continue to be shaped by our strategic and broader political cultures which are driven at least in part by our historical experiences and legacies including those stemming from our participation in the First World War (the Anzac legend and all that).
This and a growing interest in my own families' involvement in that conflict - one of my great uncles was obliterated by shell fire at Passchendaele while his brother died of wounds received at Villers Bretteneux - led me on retirement from academe to research and begin drafting a book-length work entitled Australian Journeys: Colonial Endeavours, Imaginaries and Reckonings. This covers the period from 1840 to 1920 and interleaves the experiences of ordinary Australian convicts, settlers and gold-seekers and their families (who happen also to be my forbears) with the story of Australia's broader (and I would argue largely unfinished) search for a national identity.
You can read an introductory overview to this latest, and on-going, work as well as other pieces I have written or published recently by clicking on the 'Recent writings' button above.
The great value of being retired (or on 'half pay') is that you have plenty of time to read. Click on the "Writings of interest' button above to see what I am currently reading, some selected quotes from these and other works, and various other bits and pieces that I have have been sent or have come across.