RAHS Upcoming Events
The Royal Australian Historical Society has an established tradition of delivering a diverse Calendar of Events throughout the year, helping make history accessible to all. This program includes lectures, skills-based workshops, regional seminars, tours and book launches.
The annual RAHS Conference is a highlight of the Society’s activities. It provides an opportunity for the RAHS and its Affiliated Societies to network at a conference dedicated to promoting local and community history, showcasing the research of individuals and societies.
October 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – A (Virtual) Walk Around Sydney in June 1790
West view of Sydney Cove taken from the Rocks, at the rear of the General Hospital, 1790 (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW)
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 1 October 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
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Event Description:
Gary Sturgess takes us on a virtual walk around the settlement in Sydney Cove at the end of the First Fleet period, just before the Second Fleet arrived. Using contemporary paintings, charts and documentary sources, he recreates the physical environment of ‘the camp’, enabling us to better understand key events in the early settlement, and the shape of Georgian Sydney today.
About the speaker:
Gary L. Sturgess is an academic and former public servant who has closely studied the legal, financial and managerial foundations of the transportation system. In preparing to write a social history of the First Fleet period, he has explored the physical layout of the early settlement. Sturgess is the author of numerous articles on the convict system in peer-reviewed journals, and much of his work is published on his website, BotanyBaymen.com.
RAHS Special Lecture – Inconvenient Women: Australian radical writers 1900–1970
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 15 October 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
While Australia’s crusaders for women’s voting rights and the radical feminists of the 1970s are well known, less attention has been given to the generation between: the trailblazing women writers who challenged the nation’s status quo throughout the 20th century. Jacqueline Kent traces the influence of women whose lives and work were shaped by the seismic events of the 20th century, illuminating their immense courage and principled determination to change the world.
About the speaker:
Jacqueline Kent is a National Biography Award-winning writer principally of biographies, especially those of women. She has written the life stories of editor Beatrice Davis, pianist and social activist Hephzibah Menuhin, trans pioneer April Ashley, and the only full biography of Australia’s first woman prime minister Julia Gillard. She holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Technology, Sydney.
November 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – Records and Reveries: Alice Haigh’s photographs of Sydney in the 1920s
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 5 November 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
The beautifully-crafted photo albums created in the 1920s by RAHS member Alice Maud Haigh (1878–1934) deserve recognition both for what they tell us about the rapidly-changing urban and architectural environment in Sydney, and for their implicit invitation to see more of our urban setting by walking the streets and understanding the context. This talk introduces the photographer and her work.
About the speaker:
Dr Catherine De Lorenzo brings cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives to her research on Australian art, photography, exhibitions, and public art. Having co-authored Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening our eyes (2018), her current project, with Bandgalung curator/writer Djon Mundine, examines selected Australian art exhibitions in Europe since 1937. She has served as an associate editor on several international journals, and is an Adjunct A/Professor at Monash University.
RAHS Special Lecture – Horizontal Noticeboards: Chalk writing during the Great Depression
The Mirror, Perth, September 1930.
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 19 November 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Mr Eternity was not the only person chalking on footpaths in the 1930s. Writing on pavements is a form of graffiti that is seldom discussed but, despite its ephemerality, there is ample evidence for its existence during the last century or more. Megan Hicks investigated one short era, the tumultuous Great Depression years of the early 1930s, and found many examples of chalk and whitewash pavement writing. It was prolific, conspicuous, newsworthy and integral to the story of public life and politics in Australia during those turbulent times.
About the speaker:
Megan Hicks was a curator at the Powerhouse Museum for many years before turning to freelance work as a museum and heritage advisor, particularly for organisations with health and medicine collections. Megan also completed a PhD on ‘Pavement graffiti’ at Macquarie University and went on to become an Adjunct Researcher in urban studies with Western Sydney University. Currently, as an independent researcher, Megan’s particular interest is informal writing in public spaces, including graffiti and flyposters.
December 2025
RAHS Day Lecture – Sydney Brutalism
Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 3 December 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: Free
Event Description:
Brutalist architecture hit Sydney in the late 1950s when local architects and their international peers experimented with raw concrete and brick and kicked off a revolution. These brave new buildings were ambitious, optimistic — often divisive — and predominantly made onsite by hand, not machine. For the next 30 years Sydney produced some of the world’s best examples of brutalist architecture. Sirius. The Sydney Masonic Centre. UTS Tower. The ribbed concrete shells of the Sydney Opera House. Design writer Heidi Dokulil explores Sydney’s brutalist architecture, its international influences, its architects, builders and residents, and the public buildings, university campuses and homes that changed the face of the city.
About the speaker:
Heidi Dokulil is the co-founder of Good Habitat and the Australian Design Unit. Heidi writes for T Australia: The New York Times Style Magazine, ArchitectureAU and Design Anthology. She co-curated the exhibitions Conversations of Things New and PechaKucha Night Sydney and is the author of BKH on Sydney design firm Burley Katon Halliday.