News
Keep up to date with the History Innovation Fund and the History department at the University of Auckland.
History Innovation Fund alumna Sasha Rasmussen awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship
30 May, 2023
The History Innovation Fund committee are so pleased to announce that our HIF recipient Sasha Rasmussen has been awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. She will take it up next year at the University of Nottingham with Prof Sarah Badcock (a distinguished scholar of Russian history).
From conversations and emails, I know that she is deeply grateful for the support provided by the History Innovation Fund and Auckland. In Sasha’s case, I’m pretty sure that it made the difference and helped her survive until a multi-year award (richly deserved) came through.
The History Innovation Fund is delighted to announce two new fellows for the 2022 academic year, both of whom may be familiar as past graduates of our department.
18 February 2022
HIF 2022 Postdoctoral Fellow
Sasha Rasmussen will join us from the beginning of this semester after completing her doctorate at Oxford. She’ll be working on projects arising from her thesis, ‘Feminine Feelings: Women and Sensation in Paris and St Petersburg, 1900-1913’. Situated at the intersection of gender and sensory histories, this thesis asks how it felt to be a woman in this period: how they inhabited their bodies, their daily encounters with the material environment of the city, and how they understood themselves and their world through the senses. She will also be starting on a new project addressing the changing nature of female intimacy in Russia through the revolutionary period.
HIF 2022 Postdoctoral Writing Fellowship
For mid-2022, Branka Bogdan will be joining us as a part-time writing fellow. Branka will be working on a new project, ‘Reproductive Lives: Women, Technology, and the Lifecycle in New Zealand, 1945–2000’. Her doctorate, completed at Monash University in 2019, considered related issue in the former Yugoslavia; now she is turning her attention to New Zealand.
Sasha and Branka join our 2021/2022 fellow Matthew Birchall, who will be with us until mid-2022. Belated congratulations to Matthew, who has not only successfully defended his thesis whilst with us, but has been awarded the NZHA’s Mary Boyd Prize for his article ‘History, Sovereignty, Capital: Company Colonization in South Australia and New Zealand’ published in the Journal of Global History.
Warmest congratulations to all our fellows on their success. And a reminder to staff, our fellows are often eager for teaching experiences, and the opportunity to talk about their projects and academic life in general, so do reach out! Who knows, one day we all might actually be back on campus!
The HIF Committee
Felicity Barnes: the best is history
1 September 2020
Felicity Barnes knows how hard her colleagues in history work and the value of their research. She’s behind a new $500,000 History Innovation Fund she hopes can help.
Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan: History fund established at Auckland University
24 August 2020
The University of Auckland’s History department has been gifted $500,000 to establish a History Innovation Fund.
The gift was donated by Dr Felicity Barnes, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Auckland, and her partner Michael Whitehead.
Jesse speaks to Dr Barnes about the purpose of the fund.
New history fund will uncover more of our own stories
5 August 2020
A vision to stimulate world-class historical research is behind a $500,000 gift to establish a History Innovation Fund at the University of Auckland.