As universities move more and more teaching online, educators have mixed reactions. This article puts forward five lessons learned over seven years of online teaching in a diploma-level university history course. Many students in the course have low digital literacy, but they are able to overcome difficulties with their online study when given the…[Read more]

In reality, the role of surveyors and cartographers throughout history was often far from peaceful. It was their initial explorations that paved the way for destructive waves of colonising armies and civilians. At each stage of mapping an area, clues are preserved about the priorities and prejudices of the person wielding the pencil, and those…[Read more]

This week, a farmer in the Belgian town of Erquelinnes caused an international ruckus when he moved a stone standing in his tractor’s path. This stone marked the boundary between Belgium and France. By moving it 2.29 metres, he expanded Belgium’s territory.

Talk to any surveyor, conveyance lawyer, or farmer in Tasmania today and you will hear stories of troublesome property boundaries that date back to the colonial period. These complaints are nothing new – from almost the beginning of the British colony, accusations were made against the Survey Office and the quality of its work. Two charges were…[Read more]

(non-refereed) For the Europeans at Risdon Cove, 16 October 1803 looked like a normal day for their fledgling camp. Normal, of course, being a relative term here. The site was probably bustling, as the newcomers set about making their presence permanent on the edge of the River Derwent. Without fanfare, the 29-year-old Irishman James Meehan…[Read more]

When the British landed on the island of Van Diemen’s Land in 1803, they found lands seemingly prepared for them. Abundant open plains drew the newcomers further inland, attracted by the prospects of further pastoral and agricultural success. What they neither understood nor acknowledged were the thousands of years of cultivation prior to their a…[Read more]

The phenomenon of settlements moving away from their churches, towards the edges of surrounding commons is known as ‘common-edge drift’. Existing literature emphasises the ‘isolated church’, but this not the only indication of common-edge drift – an ‘embedded’ church will often have been constructed after drift, within the new settlement. U…[Read more]

This blog post describes five steps for post-graduates trying to survive the conference season.

This article explains some basic principles for using historical maps in family history research.

This article discusses the benefits of family history as a gentle entry point for individuals who ‘don’t like history’, with reference to the social history skills that are built into family history research.