In 2026, Associate Professor Carolyn Holbrook joined the SSN as a Deputy Convenor. We sat down to learn a bit more about her, her work, and her hopes for the SSN.
Welcome to the SSN, Carolyn. Can you share a bit about your background and how you came to appreciate interdisciplinarity?
I am an historian in the Centre for Contemporary Histories in the Faculty of Arts and Education. I came to academic history after careers in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and as a freelance journalist. I suspect that my approach to academia reflects that background. While I love history for its own sake, I am interested as an academic in holistic and ‘outward facing’ approaches to solving the problems of the present, and I believe that historical perspectives have an important part to play.
Can you share a bit about your interests and work in history? How do you bring history into conversation with other disciplines and policy?
My research ranges across political, policy and cultural history, including the history of Medicare and cancer control, the latter of which I collaborate on with Cancer Council Victoria. I also write about the history of Australian immigration, housing and Indigenous policy, the history of Australian federalism, and the history of the concept of national security. I am very interested in the history of group dynamics/social cohesion, and in viewing phenomena such as nationalism through the lens of evolutionary psychology and sociology. My most recent research on Anzac commemoration frames it as a quasi-religious phenomenon, which through its rituals and values, seeks to function as a form of social ‘glue’. I am also looking at railway heritage and commemoration as a form of social connection.
I am the director of the Australian Policy and History network, which applies historical expertise to contemporary policy issues. Recently, I have worked with Cancer Council Victoria to establish the Australian Health & History public archive. Our pilot, which launched in November 2025, was supported by the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation, Prof. Matthew Clarke, and the Faculty of Arts and Education. We have uploaded thousands of documents relating to cancer prevention, treatment and care. The publicly accessible archive has great potential to foster interdisciplinary public health research, and we plan to expand it to include other health issues, such as mental health and diet and nutrition.
What do you hope to achieve at the SSN?
As an incoming deputy convenor of the Science and Society Network, I am excited about being an ambassador for problem-focussed, teams-based interdisciplinary research with real-world benefits. As an historian, I am keen to demonstrate how the humanities can add value to scientific research by tackling those complex interfaces where science meets human nature. I look forward to working with the SSN team to make your lives easier as researchers, which means getting the research policy settings, career incentives, communications and workplace culture right!
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