About the lectures
The Menzies Lecture and Reese Lecture are annual highlights of the Menzies Australia Institute calendar.
The Menzies Lecture is delivered by a distinguished person, of any nationality, to reflect on a subject of contemporary interest affecting Britain and Australia.
The Trevor Reese Memorial Lecture is given in honour of Dr Reese, a distinguished historian of the British Commonwealth and Australia and Reader at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, the Institute’s home from 1982 to 1999. The lecture is given by an emerging scholar in the disciplines of history or political science.
The 2024 Menzies Lecture was delivered by Professor Kate Fullagar on 17 May 2024 at King's. Professor Fullagar discussed her new book Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled.
Bennelong and Phillip were leaders of their respective people in the first encounters between Britain and Indigenous Australians, Phillip the colony's first governor, and Bennelong the Yiyura leader.
The 2024 Reese Lecture was delivered on 24 October by Dr Jon Piccini, Senior Lecturer at the Australian Catholic University on the title "Tom Mboya’s Australia: Kenya, Papua New Guinea and the end of Empire".
Drawing on Commonwealth government records, his own personal papers and voluminous commentary, Dr Piccini showed how Mboya’s Australian visit was read in diverse ways and served equally dissimilar purposes.
More on our previous lectures
Australia: A New Political Geography?
The 2023 Menzies Annual Lecture was delivered by Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History at the Australian National University. The lecture explored the recent transformation of the nation imagined by the first Prime Minister Edmund Barton into something that would likely have dismayed him and fellow Federation founders.
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Billy Hughes' Great War
The 2022 Menzies Annual Lecture was presented by Professor Carl Bridge, former Director of the Menzies Australia Institute. Carl shares insights on the 7th Prime Minister of Australia, Billy Hughes, and his influence on national politics, especially during the Great War.
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Becoming a Mother in Australia
The 2020 Reese Lecture is presented by historian Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy from the University of Melbourne where she examines the changing cultural attitudes towards motherhood, changing theories of maternal subjectivity, and how mothers’ own experiences are remembered in oral history interviews.
The lecture asks what happens to a woman when she becomes a mother and considers whether this transition has become more challenging over the past 75 years.
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