Michelle Arrow

Michelle Arrow FASSA is an Australian historian, academic and author who is currently a Professor of History at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She is best known for her work on Australia in the 1970s. Arrow won the Ernest Scott Prize in 2020 for The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia. Arrow is the Vice-President of the Australian Historical Association.^[1]

Michelle Arrow FASSA
Awards	Ernest Scott Prize (2020) John Barrett Award (2023) NSW Premier's Digital History Prize (2014)
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Sydney (BA [Hons]) University of Sydney (Ph.D)
Thesis	'Written Into History : a social and cultural history of Australian women playwrights, 1928-1968' (1999)
Academic work
Institutions	Macquarie University
Main interests	cultural history, social history, political history
Notable works	The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia (2019) Friday on our minds : popular culture in Australia since 1945 (2009)

Early life and education

Arrow graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts (hons) and received her PhD in history from the same university in 1999. Her thesis was a social and cultural history of Australian women playwrights between 1928 and 1968, including Gwen Meredith.^[2]

Academic career

Arrow's first academic work was an article in the Journal of Australian Studies in 1998. Her first book, Upstaged : Australian women dramatists in the limelight at last, was published in 2002. It expanded on the work undertaken for her doctoral thesis. Upstaged discusses Australia's largely forgotten women playwrights, demonstrating their popularity and political importance.^[3][4][5] In the early 2000s Arrow was an Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio and television presenter, including the "failed ABC TV history experiment, Rewind."^[6]

From 2008 to 2012, Arrow was one of the five members of the advisory panel for the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History, serving alongside John Hirst, Joan Beaumont and Geoffrey Blainey.^[6] In 2009, her second book Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia Since 1945 was published. It was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's Australian History Prize.^[7]

In 2014, Arrow and her colleagues won the NSW Premier's Digital History Prize for their 2013 radio documentary Public Intimacies: The 1974 Royal Commission on Human Relationships, discussing the three commissioners (Anne Deveson, Elizabeth Evatt, and Felix Arnott), the commission and its findings. This documentary was funded by the 2012 Frederick Watson Fellowship.^[8]

In 2019, Arrow's third book was published, The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia. The book was awarded the Ernest Scott Prize in 2020.^[9]

Arrow was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2023.^[10]

Bibliography

Author

• — (2003). Upstaged: Australian women dramatists in the limelight at last. Strawberry Hills, New South Wales: Currency Press. ISBN 0868196908.
• — (2009). Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia Since 1945. Sydney: UNSW Press. ISBN 9780868406626.
• — (2019). The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press. ISBN 9781742234700.

References

1. "Executive Committee: 2022–24 Executive Committee". The Australian Historical Association. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
2. Michelle Arrow, Written into history : a social and cultural history of Australian women playwrights, 1928-1968, University of Sydney, Fisher Library Rare Books and Special Collections, identifier: OCLC: (OCoLC)222562800
3. "Animal Farm in the age of Trump". ABC Radio National. 28 September 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
4. Arrow, Michelle (24 July 2003). "'Scarlet woman' put us centre stage". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
5. Arrow, Michelle (11 October 2006). "Mistress of hearts and airwaves". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
6. "Still looking for a winner from the history wars of 2007". Crikey. 21 January 2009. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
7. 2010 NSW Premier’s History Awards Shortlist and judges’ citations, Government of New South Wales, https://www.create.nsw.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/2010-PHA-shortlist-for-Web.pdf
8. "Public Intimacies: The Royal Commission on Human Relationships". ABC Radio National. 28 April 2013. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
9. Lemmon, Justin (7 May 2020). "Professor Michelle Arrow awarded 2020 Ernest Scott Prize". Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
10. "The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia welcomes 21 new Fellows". Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. 8 November 2023. Retrieved 23 November 2023.