Scholars at War is the first scholarly publication to examine the effect World War II had on the careers of Australasian social scientists. It links a group of scholars through geography, transnational, national and personal scholarly networks, and shared intellectual traditions, explores their use, and contextualizes their experiences and contributions within wider examinations of the role of intellectuals in war.

This is the second volume to emerge from a project on Indigenous participation in the Australian economy, funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant, and involving the cooperation of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at The Australian National University and the National Museum of Australia. The Chief Investigators were Ian Keen, Chris Lloyd, Anthony Redmond, the Partner Investigator was Mike Pickering, Fiona Skyring was an associate researcher on the project, and Natasha Fijn was research assistant.

This collection of papers, the third in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project, explores indigenous Austronesian ideas of origin, ancestry and alliance and considers the comparative significance of these ideas in social practice. The papers examine social practice in a diverse range of societies extending from insular Southeast Asia to the islands of the Pacific.

Economics, Keynes once wrote, can be a ‘very dangerous science’. Sometimes, though, it can be moulded to further the common good though it might need a leap in mental outlook, a whole new zeitgeist to be able do do. This book is about a transformation in Australian economists’ thought and ideas during the interwar period. It focuses upon the interplay between economic ideas, players and policy sometimes in the public arena.

These seven essays by the most recent English translator of The Tale of Genji emphasize three major interpretive issues. What is the place of the hero (Hikaru Genji) in the work? What story gives the narrative underlying continuity and form? And how does the closing section of the tale (especially the ten “Uji chapters”) relate to what precedes it? Written over a period of nine years, the essays suggest fresh, thought-provoking perspectives on Japan’s greatest literary classic.

The Thai—Yunnan Project is proud to present this English-language version of Professor Yos Santasombat’s fascinating ethnography of the Tai in Daikong, southwestern China. It represents a significant contribution to the ethnographic record of the Tai peoples.

‘No nation can escape its geography’, warned Percy Spender, Australia’s Minister for External Affairs, in 1950. With the immediate turmoil of World War II over, communism and decolonisation had ended any possibility that Asia could continue to be ignored by Australia. In the early 1950s, Australia embarked on its most ambitious attempt to engage with Asia: the Colombo Plan. This book examines the public and private agendas behind Australia’s foreign aid diplomacy and reveals the strategic, political and cultural aims that drove the Colombo Plan.

This book tells the story of Michi, one of 650 Japanese war brides who arrived in Australia in the early 1950s. The women met Australian servicemen in post-war Japan and decided to migrate to Australia as wives and fiancées to start a new life. In 1953, when Michi reached Sydney Harbour by boat with her two Japanese-born children, she knew only one person in Australia: her husband. She did not know any English so she quickly learned her first English phrase, “I like Australia”, in the car on the way from the harbour to meet her Australian family.

When it came in September 1975, Papua New Guinea’s independence was marked by both anxiety and elation. In the euphoric aftermath, decolonisation was declared a triumph and immediate events seemed to justify that confidence. By the 1990s, however, events had taken a turn for the worse and there were doubts about the capacity of the State to function. Before independence, Papua New Guinea was an Australian Territory. Responsibility lay with a minister in Canberra and services were provided by Commonwealth agencies.

The entire Australian continent was once covered with networks of Indigenous placenames. These names often evoke important information about features of the environment and their place in Indigenous systems of knowledge. On the other hand, placenames assigned by European settlers and officials are largely arbitrary, except for occasional descriptive labels such as ‘river, lake, mountain’. They typically commemorate people, or unrelated places in the Northern hemisphere.