Military History Section Staff Biographies
Dr Robert Nichols
Robert Nichols is the Memorial’s Senior Editor. He has worked at the Memorial since 1995, when he joined Education and Visitor Services as an Education Officer. Between 1996 and 2001 he worked in Gallery Development, putting together exhibitions for a new Orientation Gallery and later for ANZAC Hall. Originally a history teacher in Sydney, he came to Canberra in 1990 to undertake a PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University, where he then lectured and tutored before joining the Memorial. He continues to teach courses in philosophy and critical thinking skills at the ANU’s Centre for Continuing Education.
Robert has edited more than 30 Memorial exhibitions and 10 books, and is the Supervising Editor for the Memorial’s official magazine Wartime. He is currently writing a book on the fall of great cities throughout history.
Publications
“After the shooting stopped”, Wartime, 45, 2009
Review of The Oxford companion to Australian military history, by Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior, with Jean Bou, Wartime, 45, 2009
Review of Dictionary of battles: a guide to 8,500 battles from antiquity to the twenty-first century, by Tony Jaques, Wartime, 38, 2007
“A mystery solved”, Wartime, 37, 2007
(With Laura Back), Threads: the tapestries and textiles of Cotehele House (Cotehele House, Cornwall: National Trust 2006)
“The night war came to Sydney”, Wartime, 33, 2005
“The “lucky” ship”, Wartime, 31, 2005
“Victory in Europe”, Wartime, 30, 2005
“The first kamikaze attack?”, Wartime, 28, 2004
Review of Intelligence in war, by John Keegan, Wartime, 25, 2004
Review of The face of battle, ed. by John Reeve and David Stevens, Wartime, 25, 2004
“A small irony of war”, Wartime, 24, 2003
“The capture of the Amiens gun”, Wartime, 23, 2003
“The battle of Bismarck Sea”, Wartime, 21, 2003
“Hackneyed, slipshod writing”, review of Gallipoli: our last man standing: the extraordinary life of Alec Campbell by Jonathan King, and Gallipoli: the Turkish story by Kevin Fewster, Vecihi Basarin and Hatice Basarin, Canberra Times, 3 May 2003
Review of The First World War: Volume 1: To arms, by Hew Strachan, Wartime, 20, 2002
“In defence of punctuation* ... (*and footnotes)”, ABC Radio National website, transcript of Lingua Franca talk, 29 September 2002
“Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett 1881–1931”, Wartime, 18, 2002
“Short-lived menace”, Wartime, 17, 2002
Review of The Second World War: a people’s history by Joanna Burke, Wartime, 17, 2002
“Two perceptions of Pearl Harbor”, Wartime, 16, 2001
“Beached and done for: the Sydney–Emden fight”, Wartime, 15, 2001
Review of Exhibiting authenticity by David Phillips, Museums National, 8, 1999
“Outside the wire: A new education program at the Australian War Memorial”, Teaching History, 30, 1996
Conferences and seminar papers
“The art of writing museum labels”, Australian Society for Technical Communication (NSW) Conference, Sydney, NSW, 27 October 2007
“Publishing the institutional book: brave new world or the ultimate vanity press?”, Fourth International Conference of the Book, Emerson College, Boston, MA, USA, 20–22 October 2006
“The art and politics of museum labels”, Department of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Education, University of London, 10 May 2006
“The ethics of editing”, National Conference of Australasian Societies of Editors, Brisbane, 18 July 2003
“Second World War resources on the Memorial’s website”, Macquarie University Education Conference, Sydney, 16 October 2003
“Sydney under attack, 1942”, National History Teachers’ Conference, National Maritime Museum, Sydney, 31 May 2002
“Recent changes at the Australian War Memorial and the development of ANZAC Hall”, Energising History Conference 2000, Sydney, 6 March 2000
“The challenge of change”, Social Education Association of Australia Biennial National Conference, Perth, WA, 27 September 1999
“Interpreting Gallipoli for the 21st century”, History Teachers of Australia Association Annual National Conference, Perth, 29 September 1999
“‘Communication techniques”, IMAGE Australia Conference, New Parliament House, Canberra, ACT, 18 July 1998
“Outside the wire: a new education program at the Australian War Memorial”, presentation to the NSW History Teachers’ Association Annual Conference, 30 March 1996
“Backward causation and the fixity of the past”, Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 4 July 1994
