Humanities and Social Sciences

History Program

Staff Profiles

Dr Adrian Jones OAM

Senior Lecturer Room: David Myers Building E105 Tel: (61 3) 9479 2461 Fax: (61 3) 9479 1942 Email: adrian.jones@latrobe.edu.au Qualifications: BA Melb., MA La Trobe, MA Harv., PhD Harv.

Adrian Jones joined the History program in 1985, continuing the La Trobe tradition of teaching Russian History started by Israel Getzler and Lewis Siegelbaum.  Adrian now serves as Director of Teaching and Learning in the School of Historical and European Studies.  Interested in every aspect of history education, primary to tertiary, Adrian has served as Convener for the Humanities in Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (1998-2002), and was one of two Foundation Directors of the National Centre for History Education (NCHE) http://hyperhistory.org (2000-03).  Adrian has also been active in community history, serving as Chair of the History Council of Victoria http://www.historycouncilvic.org.au/ (2003-08). In 2008, Adrian's work with these bodies was recognised by the award of an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in the Australia Day Honours list. The award cited his 'service to history education as a lecturer and author, and for executive roles in a range of historical and teaching organisations'.

Adrian alternates between teaching two Modern European history survey subjects, three subjects in Russian history -- early-modern, nineteenth-century intellectual, and early Soviet – another subject on European cultural history (on urban life and private space, medieval to modern), a travel-&-study subject on Ottoman history (fourteenth to twentieth centuries) taught in Turkey, and a historiography subject on rhetorics of history.  Adrian’s contributions to teaching have been recognised by awards for excellence from the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria (2007), La Trobe’s Dean of Humanities (2006) and Vice-Chancellor (2008), and the Australian Learning and Teaching Committee (2008).

Research Projects

Adrian is an Europeanist with wide interests.  He reads Russian, French and Turkish.  His current research interests focus on Russian and Ottoman history, especially the eighteenth century, and on historiography (methods and philosophies of history), especially possibilities of relating phenomenology to history to re-validate narratives and the evocative in history.  Adrian is writing a cultural history of a Russian-Ottoman encounter in the era of Peter the Great and Ahmed III: the Battle of the Prut, 1711.

Research Publications Recent publications include On Russian history Late-Imperial Russia: An Interpretation: Three Visions, Two Cultures, One Peasantry, Bern, Peter Lang, 1997, 457 pp. ‘Easts and Wests Befuddled: Russian Intelligentsia Responses to the Russo-Japanese War’ in The Russo-Japanese War in Cultural Perspective, eds David Wells & Sandra Wilson, Macmillan, 1999, ch. 7. ‘Which Social History of Russia?’ and ‘The Village as Votchina (Вотчина): Attitudes to Property in the Post-Emancipation Russian Village’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 27: 2-3 (2000). ‘Peripheral Vision: A Russian Bourgeois’ Arctic Enlightenment’, The Historical Journal, 48: 3 (2005). On historiography Alain Badiou and Authentic Revolutions: Methods of Intellectual Inquiry', Thesis Eleven, forthcoming. ‘Vivid History: Existentialist phenomenology as a new way to understand an old way of writing history, and as a source of renewal for the writing of history’, Storia della storiografia, 54(2008), 21-56 . ‘Word and Deed: Why A Post-Poststructural History Is Needed and How It Might Look’, The Historical Journal, 43: 2 (June 2000). ‘ Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society of the USA, 7: 2 (November-December 2005). ‘Reporting in Prose: Reconsidering Ways of Writing History’, The European Legacy, 12: 3 (March 2007). On Ottoman history ‘A Note on Atatürk’s Words about Gallipoli’, History Australia, 2: 1 (December 2004). ‘An Empress and a Grand Vizier: Catherine, Baltacı Mehmed and the Battle of the Prut, 1711’ in Omeljan Pritsak Armağanı / A Tribute to Omeljan Pritsak, eds Mehmet Alpargu and Yücel Öztürk, Adapazarı, Sakarya Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2007. On Australian history Follow the Gleam: A History of Essendon Primary School, 1850-2000, Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000, 234 pp. Winner of the Information Victoria prize for the best book on the history of Victoria, 2001. ‘History Teaching in Australia: Stories are needed as well as analysis’, Australian Historical Association Bulletin, 96 (June 2003).

Graduate Supervision Areas and Topics

Adrian’s current postgraduate students are working on: a cultural history of an Ottoman hunting palace at Edirne, on Alexander Solzhenitsyn and European conservatism, on Polish magnate involvement in the Muscovite Time of Troubles, on a sociological study of Soviet art in the period of late-Communism, on an ethnographic history of the Bosnian refugee experience in Germany, on an art history of the influence of graphic publications on Vincent van Gogh, on a cultural history of literatures of melancholy in Europe (Portugal, Czechoslavkia and Turkey), and on an educational history selective academic secondary schooling in Australia.

Adrian's has supervised PhDs by Susan Aykut on the Ottoman bath and by Aris Gounaris on a study in the applied philosophy of justifications for secession from sovereign states (Aceh, Chechn’ia and Kosovo).