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Dr Tom Heenan

Coordinator, Undergraduate Australian Studies Program
Deputy Teaching Coordinator, School of Journalism & Australian Studies

PhD (Mon)

View contact details in Monash Staff Directory

Biography

Tom believes that learning should be informative and a fun experience. He likes nothing more than taking students on the road. His students sample life in Outback New South Wales. He introduces them to the mining community around Broken Hill, and the endless expanses of Eldee Station and the Mundi Mundi Plain. They ride camels, visit the ghost town of Silverton and meet the indigenous custodians at Lake Mungo National Park. Students explore this and other Australian places and issues as part of Tom’s Australian Idols: Exploring Contemporary Australia unit.

Tom also coordinates the Centre’s undergraduate teaching program. As well as Australian Idols, he teaches across the Centre’s sports units — Sport and Society, A World of Sport and Australian Sports Writing — and the international relations unit, Australia in a Globalizing World.

Research Interests

Tom is also a respected researcher. He is the author of the controversial biography, From Traveller to Traitor: the Life of Wilfred Burchett (Melbourne University Press, 2006). He has also written on political economy, US management history and labour relations, and was a contributor to the recent edition of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. With Professor Chris Nyland, Tom was awarded the ‘Best Business History Paper’ at the 2004 Academy Management Conference in New Orleans. Available for doctoral and masters supervision, Tom is currently writing a history of Australia-India cricket.

His other research interests include:

• the Cold War
• the Australia security state
• international relations
• indigenous Australia
• sporting history
• globalization
• the crime fiction of Arthur Upfield.

Areas of Supervision

Biography, Globalization, the Cold War, Australian foreign policy, sport. Labour history

Current Research Projects and Grants

A History of Australia-India Cricket

Teaching

• AUS1060 Australian Idol: Exploring Contemporary Australia
• AUS1070 Sport & Society in Australia
• AUS2015/3015 A World of Sport
• AUS2050/3050 Australian Sports Writing
• AUS2070/3070 Australia in a Globalizing World

Publications

• “Robert Manne's Wilfred Burchett:  The Uses and Abuses of Biography", The Australian Journal of Politics & History, Vol 56 Issue 2, June 2010, pp 208-224.
• "Burnt Bridges:  Australian Cricket and the Subcontinent, 1888-1960", in Australian Studies:  Reading History, Culture & Identity.  Editors David Dunstan, Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay & Shibnath Banerjee, Delhi:  Worldview Publications, 2010 (with David  Dunstan).
• “Manne of Influence: Wilfred Burchett and Australia’s Long Cold War”, OnLine Opinion, 4 July 2008 (with Ben Kiernan, Gavan McCormack, Greg Lockhart, & Stuart MacIntyre).
• Burchett, Wilfred (1911-1983) Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 17, Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp 157-159.
• Hutton, Geoffrey, Wilfred (1908-1985) Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 17, Melbourne University Press, 2007, p 568.
• From Traveller to Traitor. The Life of Wilfred Burchett, Melbourne University Press, 2006.
• “Mary Van Kleeck, Taylorism & the Control of Knowledge”, Management Decision, December 2005 (with Professor Chris Nyland).
• “William Thompson & Anna Doyle Wheeler: A Marriage of Minds on Jeremy Bentham's Doorstep", in The Status of Women in Political Economy, Edward Elgar Pub., UK, 2003.

Presentations

• “Australian Sport in the Asian Century”, Symposium: Australia’s Asia: The Antipodean Orient since the 19th Century. University of Copenhagen,Denmark  2010.

Conferences

• Mythologising Australia’s Cold War History: Robert Manne & His Myth of Burchett the Traitor”, European Association for the Study of Australia (EASA) Conference, University of the Baleric Islands, Spain, 2009
• “Barred: The Australian Government’s War on Wilfred Burchett”, British Australian Studies Association, University of Exeter, UK, 2006.
•  “Mary Van Kleeck, Taylorism & the Control of Knowledge” (with Professor Chris Nyland), Academy of Management Conference, New Orleans, USA, 2004.   This paper won the ‘best business history’ section at the Conference.
•  “Running the McCarthyist Gauntlet: the Cleansing of Progressivism from Management Thought in the Post-War Years”, (with Professor Chris Nyland), Lancaster University, UK, 2003.

Community Engagement

Outback Orations in conjunction with the Broken Hill Public Library