Staff profile

Dr Adrian Jones OAM

Associate Professor

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Historical and European Studies

DMB E105, Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Qualifications

BA (Melbourne), MA (La Trobe), MA (Harvard), PhD (Harvard).

Membership of professional associations

History Council of Victoria. Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. National Centre for History Education, History Teachers\' Association of Victoria.

Area of study

European Studies
History

Brief profile

Adrian Jones joined the History program in 1985, continuing the La Trobe tradition of teaching Russian History started by Israel Getzler and Lewis Siegelbaum. Interested in every aspect of history education, primary to tertiary, in 2008, Adrian's work in this field of public education 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’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 interests

European History

- Historical Theory and Historiography

- Ottoman History

- Russian and Soviet History

- The long Eighteenth Century in Europe

Teaching units

  • HIS2/3EIR - Early Imperial Russia.
  • HIS2/3EUT - Europe Cultural History.
  • HIS2/3FLS - From Lenin to Stalin: Soviet Society 1917-1941.
  • HIS2/3LIR - Late Imperial Russia: 1812-1917.
  • HIS2/3OTT - The Ottoman Empire (travel subject).
  • HIS2/3TCE - Twentieth Century Europe.
  • HIS3RHB - Reflective and Narrative History.

Recent publications

On Historiography

  • ‘Alain Badiou and Authentic Revolutions: Methods of Intellectual Inquiry’, Thesis Eleven, 106 (2011) 39-55.
  • ‘Reporting in Prose: Reconsidering Ways of Writing History’, The European Legacy, 12 (2007) 311-36.
  • ‘Word and Deed: Why A Post-Poststructural History Is Needed and How It Might Look’, The Historical Journal, 43: 2 (2000) 517-41.

On Historical Theory

  • ‘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) 21-55.
  • ‘What Lies About There and Then: Phenomenologies for History’, Historically Speaking, 7:2 (2005) 32-34.
  • ‘History’s “So it seems”: Heideggerian Phenomenologies and History’, Journal of the Philosophy of History, 5 (2011) 5-35.

On Russian and Ottoman History

  • ‘Peripheral Vision: A Russian Bourgeois’ Arctic Enlightenment’, The Historical Journal, 48 (2005) 623-40.
  • ‘A Note on Atatürk’s Words about Gallipoli’, History Australia, 2 (2004) 10: 1-10.
  • ‘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, 651-80.

On History Teaching

  • ‘History Teaching in Australia: Stories are needed as well as analysis’, Australian Historical Association Bulletin, 96 (June 2003) 27-42.
  • ‘Philosophical and Socio-Cognitive Foundations for Teaching in Higher Education through Collaborative Approaches to Student Learning’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43 (2011) 997-1011.
  • ‘Teaching History at University through Communities of Inquiry’, Australian Historical Studies, 42 (2011) 168-93.

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.