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Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies

The Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies (CTHS) received formal recognition within the University of Tasmania in 1984, as an adjunct of the History and Classics Program within the School of Humanities.

Aims of the Centre

  • Promote research into Tasmanian history
  • Encourage and assist publication of research
  • Provide professional advice to those researching Tasmanian history
  • Generally, encourage interest in Tasmanian history

Publications

The CTHS has a range of publications to browse that are available to purchase, including issues of the Tasmanian Historical Studies journal.

Companion to Tasmanian History

The online Companion to Tasmanian History is a comprehensive volume providing information about every important aspect of Tasmania’s history, covering all periods and all places : First Edition.

Tasmanian Historical Studies

Tasmanian Historical Studies is the journal of the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies and publishes research on all aspects of Tasmanian history.

From 1985 to 1992 the annual journal of the Centre was called the Bulletin of the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies. Since 1993 the Centre’s journal has been called Tasmanian Historical Studies. Since the 1995-6 issue Tasmanian Historical Studies has been a refereed journal.

Articles should be written in accordance with the following Notes for Contributors.

  1. Do not show your name on the manuscript itself.
  2. Email your article to the editor Stefan.Petrow@utas.edu.au
  3. Footnotes should be numbered using the automatic numbering function.
  4. The maximum length for a manuscript is 8000 words of text. Shorter articles are welcome.
  5. Images should be high resolution/print quality and sent separately from the text with captions for each image. Images saved from the web will often not be of an acceptable size/resolution and should not be sent. Indicate in the text where you want the images to be placed. Authors are responsible for
    getting written copyright permission.
  1. On the use of capitals, the safest general rule is: when in doubt, don’t. Capitals should, however, be used for a specific office, title or institution. Thus ‘Corporal Jones said ...,’ but ‘A corporal’s lot is not a happy one’; ‘Lieutenant-Governor Arthur said
    ...’, but ‘lieutenant-governors were given an impossible task’; and ‘the Department of Public Instruction’ but ‘public instruction departments’.
  2. For abbreviations that consist of capitals, do not use full stops. Thus, NSW, not N.S.W.; TAHO [Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office], not T.A.H.O., and JPPP, not J.P.P.P.
  3. Do not use a full stop after the initials of persons named in the text or footnotes.
  4. Given names or initials should precede surnames in both text and footnotes.
  5. Dates should be shown in the form: 23 May 1917. The names of months should always be spelt out in full.
  6. Numbers up to one hundred should normally be spelt out (e.g. ‘Three men in a tub’). The commonest exceptions are percentages (87 per cent) and a succession of quantities (‘Of the 212 passengers, 186 were children, 14 were teachers and 12 were ministers of religion’).
  7. For a span of years or pages, use the forms: 1922-3, 1934-45, 1842-1933, pp 3-8, pp 12-15, pp 23-5, pp 134-5.
  8. For a dash in the text, use an em dash (—) rather than a hyphen (-).
  9. For percentages in the text (but not in tables) use the form: 88 per cent.
  10. Use italics for words or phrases not fully accepted into English and for the titles of publications, films, and ship names. Titles of articles, of chapters in books, of unpublished theses, and of unpublished reports should be placed within single quotation marks.
  11. Use single quotation marks (‘...’) where normally required and double quotation marks (“ ”) only for quotations within quotations. Quotations of more than about forty words should be put in an indented paragraph without quotation marks and with an extra line above and below.
  12. Within a quotation, follow the spelling and punctuation of the original and indicate any omissions with three ellipsis points (...).
  13. After a full stop to end a sentence, put one space. This also applies to footnotes.
  1. On first reference to a book, give: author’s given name or initial(s) followed by surname, comma, full title of the book from the title page (in italics), comma, place of publication, comma, publisher (only if the book is recently published, difficult to find, or if identifying the publisher has
    some significance in the argument of the paper), comma, year of publication, comma, and reference to page or pages as appropriate using the forms: p 7 or pp 58-9, and full stop: L Robson, A History of Tasmania, Melbourne, 1983, Vol 1, p 342. For edited books, indicate the name of the editor (ed) or editors (eds). Some standard references may not require the name of author or editor, such as Australian Dictionary of Biography or Cyclopaedia of Tasmania.
  2. On first reference to an article in a journal or chapter in a book, follow these examples: Anne McLaughlin, ‘Against the League: Fighting the “Hated Stain”’, Tasmanian Historical Studies, Vol 5, No 1, 1995-6, pp 76-104; F M Neasey, ‘Andrew Inglis Clark and Australian Federalism’, in M Haward and J Warden (eds), An Australian Democrat:The Life, Work and Consequences of Andrew Inglis Clark, Hobart, 1995, p 39.
  3. On first reference to theses, give level, University and date, thus: J Smith, ‘Some Aspects of Radicalism in Rokeby in the 1930s’, MA thesis, University of Tasmania, 1977.
  4. For subsequent references to items, give the author’s surname, a short title drawn from the full title, and page references as appropriate, thus: Robson, Tasmania, Vol 1, pp 343-5; McLaughlin, ‘Against the League’, p 93; Smith, ‘Radicalism in Rokeby’, p 15. Do not use ibid., op. cit., passim, vide supra and suchlike Latinities.
  5. For newspaper references, always include page number e.g. Mercury, 12 May 1904, p 2.

For other details, follow the advice of Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, 6th ed., Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 2002.

Members

CTHS Advisory Committee:

Associated Research

Point Puer Juvenile Convict Reform Prison at Port Arthur

Nigel Hargraves - Honorary Research Associate
PO Box 116, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, Australia 7006
nigel.hargraves@bigpond.com

Point Puer operated from 1834 to 1848 and was a purpose-built British institution for convicted male juveniles. It predated the opening of Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight by four years.

The first of a two-part study of the Point Puer Boys' Establishment is currently underway and a publication is anticipated in the near future. In particular, this work focuses on the penal system as it affected the juvenile convicts who arrived in Van Diemen's Land from the British Isles before the end of 1834. The last of these boys left Point Puer in 1840 and the impact of education, trade training and religious instruction is considered in conjunction with the boys' interaction with the prison and its subculture. A longitudinal study of the lives of boys has been made to assess the outcomes of the reforming objectives of Point Puer and includes the time they spent assigned to masters in Van Diemen's Land as well as what happened to them after being freed.

Following the release of this initial work a further publication on the second phase of Point Puer will be undertaken based on research already underway.

Young Irelanders: Exiles in Paradise

A website resource was created titled The Young Irelanders: Exiles in Paradise, resulting from a 2008 University of Tasmania Community Engagement Grant. The grant’s aim was to bring together community groups, descendants, historians and scholars to consolidate the knowledge that exists in Tasmania and elsewhere about the Young Irelanders’ time and stories here.

Current Research Interests of Committee Members

Committee Member

Research Interests

Dr Tom Dunning

Current projects include the Social and Cultural Life of the Plebeian Peoples of Scotland and the American Civil War and Cultural Memory.

Dr Richard Ely

Biography of Frank Bond; editing reminiscences of Sarah Hood; an ethnographic study of a heritage precinct in Plenty Valley, Victoria; educational and religious history.

Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart

Convict history, history and heritage site interpretation.

Associate Professor Stefan Petrow

William Denison; Policing in Tasmania 1899-1999.

Professor Michael Bennett

Politics, religion, society and culture in late medieval and early modern Britain; the royal succession in Britain; the global diffusion of vaccination in the early nineteenth century.

Professor Pam Sharpe

Pam Sharpe's research interests span the history of women, demography, poverty and textiles from seventeenth to nineteenth century England. She is also working on the history of a mining community in Western Australia.

Associate Professor Peter Chapman

Peter is currently editing and researching the Historical Records of Australia.

Current Research Interests of Friends

Friend of CTHS

Research Interests

Tony Harrison
19 Firth Road, Lenah Valley, 7008
Ph/Fax: 03 6278 1591

Captain Samuel Wright, second commandant of Sarah Island penal station.
The History of Tasmania's commercial fisheries, their management and development.
Family and Fisheries Website

Dr Caroline Evans

History of children, welfare, and institutions, cultural heritage.

Dr Alison Alexander

Women's history; convict history.