Oral History Australia

The 2026 Australian Historical Association Conference will be hosted by Macquarie Unviesity in Sydney, New South Wales from 29 June to 3 July.

The organising committee a welcome historians from around Australia and the world to Sydney, on Dharug Country, to share their new research and engage one another on the pressing questions facing our discipline and our communities, under the theme ‘Changing Minds’.

Call for Papers

The capacity to ‘change one’s mind’ is a foundational premise in the discipline of history.  Upon encountering evidence that disrupts our existing explanations, the story goes, we might adjust, rework or perhaps even overturn our interpretations.  And yet, historians do not often describe how and why they have changed their minds. While we are comfortable tracing changes in historiography, it seems harder to narrate our own intellectual alterations or confess that we were once, perhaps, mistaken.

As historians, we also tend to be quite interested in how mentalities, attitudes, and beliefs change over time. Might there be a relationship to consider between how we narrate changes in ourselves as researchers and the changes we seek to explain?  Perhaps a more honest account of our own attachments and preoccupations would help us to explain why some changes happen quickly, others take an age and some, though imagined and wished for, never seem to eventuate.

To consider how we might make space for, explain and even produce changes of heart and mind, the 2026 AHA annual meets at Macquarie University, on Dharug Country, in Sydney. The organisers welcome proposals for papers and panels on any geographical area, time period, field of history, or theoretical or conceptual aspects of history, especially those that consider changes of mind, whether historical or historiographic.  The conference will also continue the tradition of hosting streams for various AHA-affiliated groups and sub-disciplinary themes.

Submissions

Submission deadline: 1 February 2026

Submissions for individual papers should be made via this online form. 

Submissions for panels should be made via this online form. 

Enquiries can be sent to aha2026@mq.edu.au 

The 2026 Australian Historical Association Conference will be hosted by Macquarie Unviesity in Sydney, New South Wales from 29 June to 3 July.

The organising committee a welcome historians from around Australia and the world to Sydney, on Dharug Country, to share their new research and engage one another on the pressing questions facing our discipline and our communities, under the theme ‘Changing Minds’.

Call for Papers

The capacity to ‘change one’s mind’ is a foundational premise in the discipline of history.  Upon encountering evidence that disrupts our existing explanations, the story goes, we might adjust, rework or perhaps even overturn our interpretations.  And yet, historians do not often describe how and why they have changed their minds. While we are comfortable tracing changes in historiography, it seems harder to narrate our own intellectual alterations or confess that we were once, perhaps, mistaken.

As historians, we also tend to be quite interested in how mentalities, attitudes, and beliefs change over time. Might there be a relationship to consider between how we narrate changes in ourselves as researchers and the changes we seek to explain?  Perhaps a more honest account of our own attachments and preoccupations would help us to explain why some changes happen quickly, others take an age and some, though imagined and wished for, never seem to eventuate.

To consider how we might make space for, explain and even produce changes of heart and mind, the 2026 AHA annual meets at Macquarie University, on Dharug Country, in Sydney. The organisers welcome proposals for papers and panels on any geographical area, time period, field of history, or theoretical or conceptual aspects of history, especially those that consider changes of mind, whether historical or historiographic.  The conference will also continue the tradition of hosting streams for various AHA-affiliated groups and sub-disciplinary themes.

Submissions

Submission deadline: 1 February 2026

Submissions for individual papers should be made via this online form. 

Submissions for panels should be made via this online form. 

Enquiries can be sent to aha2026@mq.edu.au