Dr Lachlan Grant is a Senior Historian in the Military History Section. He joined the Australian War Memorial in 2011 as a Historian and previously worked as a lecturer in modern history at Monash University, Melbourne, where he also completed a PhD (2010) and MA (2005). He has published widely on the Second World War, specialising in the social, cultural, and military history of the conflict. His primary research interests include the prisoner-of-war experience, Australian military encounters with Asia and empire, and Australia’s Second World War in Europe. Most recently, he was lead historian and co-curator of the Memorial's new Holocaust exhibition. In 2015 he published the Changi book, based on the objects and essays in the Australian War Memorial’s collection and published by NewSouth. He has also co-edited, with Joan Beaumont and Aaron Pegram, Beyond surrender: Australian prisoners of war in the twentieth century, published by Melbourne University Press.
Lachlan's PhD thesis examines the attitudes and outlooks of Australian soldiers as they encountered the diverse peoples, cultures, and empires of Asia-Pacific during the Second World War. Based on this research, his first book, Australian soldiers in Asia and the Pacific in World War II, was published by NewSouth in 2014. Lachlan’s MA thesis examines the commemoration and memorialisation of the Australian prisoner-of-war experience.
Lachlan is the coordinator of the Australian War Memorial’s Summer Vacation Scholarship Scheme, and in 2015 he was the Australian War Memorial’s battlefield guide for the Simpson Prize on the centenary of the Gallipoli landings. He is a member of the editorial staff for the Memorial’s Wartime magazine and has served as an editor and reviews editor of an academic peer-reviewed journal. In 2013 Lachlan was appointed a Departmental Visitor with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in the School of International, Political, and Strategic Studies at the Australian National University.
Please feel free to contact Lachlan if you have any enquiries about his research or areas of expertise.
Selected publications
Books
Australian soldiers in Asia-Pacific in World War II, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014.
Edited books
The Changi book (Sydney: NewSouth), 2015.
[with Joan Beaumont and Aaron Pegram] Beyond Surrender: Australian prisoners of war in the twentieth century, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2015.
Book chapters and contributions
"‘Given a second rate job’: campaigns in Aitape-Wewak and New Britain 1944–45" in Peter Dean (ed.), Australia 1944-45: victory in the Pacific, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2015 [forthcoming November 2015].
"Letters from the past: Changi in myth, memory and history" in Lachlan Grant (ed.), The Changi book, NewSouth, Sydney, 2015, pp. 13-28.
"Buying and selling: the prisoner-of-war economy" in Grant (ed.), The Changi book, p. 102.
"Changi’s fluctuating population" in Grant (ed.), The Changi book, p. 174-76.
"From Changi to an uncertain fate" in Grant (ed.), The Changi book, p. 289.
"Anzac Day in Changi" in Grant (ed.), The Changi book, p. 325.
"The Sook Ching massacres" in Grant (ed.), The Changi book, p. 32.
"Sport, games and gambling" in Grant (ed.), The Changi book, p. 309-12.
"Thoughts of home: liberation and repatriation" in Grant (ed.), The Changi book, pp. 340-41.
"Hellships, prisoner transport and unrestricted submarine warfare in World War II" in Joan Beaumont, Lachlan Grant, and Aaron Pegram (eds), Beyond surrender: Australian prisoners of war in the twentieth century, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2015, pp. 196-97.
"Breaking barriers: the diversity of prisoner-of-war camps in Japan and Australian contacts with Japanese civilians", in Beaumont, Grant, and Pegram (eds), Beyond surrender, pp. 218-38.
[with Joan Beaumont and Aaron Pegram] "Remembering and rethinking captivity" in Beaumont, Grant, and Pegram (eds.), Beyond surrender, pp. 1-17.
"Operations in the Markham and Ramu Valleys" in Peter Dean (ed.), Australia 1943: the liberation of New Guinea, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2013, pp. 233-54.
"Monument and ceremony: the Australian Ex–Prisoners of War Memorial and the Anzac legend", in Kevin Blackburn and Karl Hack (eds), Forgotten captives in Japanese–occupied Asia, RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2008, pp. 41-56.
Articles
"Surviving the Holocaust: remembering survivors from Hitler's Europe who made new lives in postwar Australia", Wartime 77, January 2017, pp. 28-32.
"The fighting Gunditjmara: Indigenous people have fought for country and for nation, from frontier wars to world wars", Wartime 77, October 2016 pp. 18-24.
“Enduring myth of Changi as ‘POW hell’ overshadows stories of survival”, The Age / Sydney Morning Herald / The Canberra Times, 5 September 2015.
"The Changi complex", Wartime 71, July 2015.
"The end of the line: the experiences of Australian prisoners of war in Japan", Wartime 68, October 2014, pp. 44-49.
"They also served: why D-Day matters to Australia", Sydney Morning Herald / The Age, 6 June 2014.
"A neglected role in history", The Canberra Times, 6 June 2014.
"On the Great Crusade: Australian participation in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe", Wartime 66, April 2014, pp. 26-33.
"D-Day: 70 years on", Wartime 66, April 2014, p. 5.
[with Karl James] "The liberation of Australian New Guinea", Wartime 64, October 2013, pp. 58-61.
“They called them ‘Hellships’”, Wartime 63, July 2013.
“Berchtesgaden: the last raid”, Wartime 61, January 2013.
“From Daylesford to Villers-Bretonneux: how the work of a Victorian artist reached a school in France”, Wartime 60, October 2012.
“The Changi Brownlow”, Weekend Australian, 22-23 September 2012.
“The Marco Polo diggers: why did Australian commandos spend months in China in 1942?”, Wartime 59, July 2012.
“The AIF and the end of empires: soldiers’ attitudes toward a ‘Free Asia’”, Australian Journal of Politics and History 57, no. 4, December 2011, pp. 479-94.
“What makes a ‘National Memorial’? The case of the Australian Ex–Prisoners of War Memorial”, Public History Review 12, 2006, pp. 92-102.
“The Australian Ex–Prisoners of War Memorial and the incorporation of prisoners of war in Anzac” in Proceedings and papers of the Japanese occupation: sixty years after the end of the Asia–Pacific war conference, 5-6 September 2005, National History Museum of Singapore, 2005, pp. 147-58.
"Review essay: Australian prisoners of war in the Pacific", Eras 7, November 2005.
PhD and MA theses
The AIF in Asia and the Pacific 1941-1945: a reorientation in attitudes toward Asia, empire, and nation (PhD thesis: Monash University, 2010).
Mateship, memory and the Australian Ex–Prisoners of War Memorial: incorporating the prisoner-of-war experience within the Anzac legend (MA thesis: Monash University, 2005).
Selected conferences, seminar papers, and talks
“Recovering memories of prisoners of war: seventy years on”, Sir Albert Coates Oration, Federation University, Ballarat, 22 October 2015.
"Producing The Changi book: 70 years on", Australian War Memorial, 26 August 2015.
"Rediscovering Changi: highlights from the Australian war memorial’s collection" in Victory in the Pacific: war and art symposium, Australian War Memorial, 15 August 2015.
"One job left to do: the difficult task facing the Australian military forces policing Indonesia in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific war, August 1945–February 1946" in The Asia–Pacific war 1931–1945 conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 9–11 July 2015
"Australia and the Second World War in Europe", Australian War Memorial, 5 June 2015.
"Rethinking Australia’s Second World War encounters with south-east Asia and New Guinea", Australian War Memorial, 3 June 2015.
Australian War Memorial battlefield guide, Simpson Prize group, Gallipoli, Turkey, 16–29 April 2015.
"Remembering Stalag XVIIIA Wolfsberg: the experiences of Australian prisoners of war in Nazi Germany", Australian War Memorial, 7 February 2015.
"Making friends with all races and creeds? AIF encounters with Asia and empire 1941–1942", Australian War Memorial, 24 November 2014.
"The end of the line: the experiences of Australian prisoners of war in Japan", Australian National University, 12 August 2014.
"The Nazi–Soviet war: the Eastern Front in Western memory", Australian War Memorial, 12 August 2014.
"International law and the transportation of prisoners of war in the Second World War", Australian War Memorial, 7 May 2014.
“Hellships, prisoner transport, and unrestricted submarine warfare in the Second World War” in Prisoners of war: the Australian experience of captivity in the twentieth century conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 5–6 June 2013.
“A Pacific war postscript: the AIF and the Indonesian independence movement", Australian War Memorial, 4 September 2012.
“The fall of Singapore 1942: 70th anniversary address”, Australian War Memorial, 15 February 2012.
“‘Good neighbours’ or ‘police dogs of imperialism’: Australian soldiers’ attitudes to Asia and empire in the Second World War”, The Pacific war 1941–45: heritage, legacies and culture conference, Monash University, Melbourne, 5–7 December 2011.
“Myths and memories of Australia’s Second World War in Asia and the Pacific”, The Second World War: popular culture and cultural memory conference, University of Brighton, UK, 13–15 July 2011.
“‘The dawn comes up like thunder’: AIF impressions of Asia and the Pacific during the Second World War", Locating history, Australian Historical Association 14th Biennial National Conference, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 7–10 July 2008.
“‘Not like in the Dorothy Lamour film …’: Australian military forces in Asia and the Pacific during the Second World War”, Monash University, Melbourne, 2 March 2007.
“Travel, literature, and Australian soldiers abroad in Asia 1941–1945”, Monash University, Melbourne, 1 September 2006.
“Reassessing the Australian prisoner-of-war experience in popular memory”, Mateship: trust and exclusion in Australian history conference, Trades Hall, Melbourne, 16–17 February 2006.
“The Australian Ex–Prisoners of War Memorial: incorporating the prisoner-of-war experience into the Anzac legend”, The Japanese occupation: sixty years after the end of the Asia–Pacific war conference, National History Museum of Singapore, 5–6 September 2005.
