Thomas Rhys GriffithsAO (born 1957) is an Australian historian. As of 2025[update] he is W K Hancock Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He is also the author of many prize-winning books and essays, notably his 2016 work The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft.
Thomas Rhys Griffiths,[1] usually known as Tom Griffiths,[2] was born in 1957.[3] His parents had scientific training and also enjoyed and studied culture, and his family home had an extensive collection of books.[4]
He attended the University of Melbourne[5] in Melbourne, Victoria, during the 1970s. He has described being inspired by his lecturer, historian Greg Dening, in 1977,[6] and said that it was only in his second and third years at university that he really "fell in love with history", thanks to Dening, Donna Merwick, and Pat Grimshaw, whom he described as "literary-minded historians".[4]
Griffiths later earned a PhD, with his later book Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (1996) based on his thesis.[4]
Career
Griffiths' first professional work was in public history, becoming a consultant to Museums Victoria, field officer at the State Library of Victoria, and historian in the state government Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands. He did some casual tutoring and also started his PhD during this time.[4] His work with the department led him into researching the history of forests and fire.[4]
When he was in his early thirties (around 1990) he was appointed lecturer in public history at Monash University.[4]
His research, writing, and teaching is focused on Australian social, cultural, and environmental history; comparative global environmental history; public history; the writing of non-fiction; and the history of Antarctica.[2] He said in 2017 that he is always focused on bringing together history and natural history, and connecting the sciences and the humanities.[4]
Griffith based used his own diary entries from his 2002–3 trip to Antarctica, as well as other sources to produce a book of essays on Antarctic history, science, and culture, titled Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica, published in 2007.[10][4]
In 2020 he wrote an essay about climate change, called "Born in the ice age, humankind now faces the age of fire – and Australia is on the frontline", published as part of the anthology Fire, Flood and Plague, edited by Sophie Cunningham.[11]
Other activities
Griffiths gave a speech at the launch of the book of essays about historian Ken Inglis, titled "I Wonder": The Life and Work of Ken Inglis (edited by Peter Browne and Seumas Spark) at Readings Carlton on 10 March 2020.[12]
Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (2007) won the Queensland and NSW Premier's Awards for Non-Fiction, and was the joint winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in 2008.[4]
The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft won the 2017 Ernest Scott Prize for History and the 2017 ACT Book of the Year Award.[2]
Personal
Personal honours and recognition include:
2001: Centenary Medal, "For service to Australian society and the humanities in the study of Australian history"[13]
2014: Officer of the Order of Australia, on the Queen's Birthday Honours List, for "distinguished service to tertiary education, particularly social, cultural and environmental history, and through popular and academic contributions to Australian literature"[1]
Personal life
On Australia Day 2025, when asked to choose "an essential Australia Day read... crucial to understanding our culture and history", Griffiths selected Truth: the third pillar,[b] and "Voice and Treaty", from the Uluru Statement from the Heart, to show the true history of the colonisation of Australia. He also mentioned two poems by Indigenous poets: Natalie Harkin's "Archival-Poetics" and Ambelin Kwaymullina's "Living on Stolen Land", and a recently published work, Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions, by historian Clare Wright.[8]
Publications
Books
Beechworth: An Australian Country Town and its Past (1987)[15]
Koori history: sources for Aboriginal studies in the State Library of Victoria (editor, 1989)[16]
Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual (co-author, with Tim Bonyhady, 1992)[17]
Secrets of the forest: discovering history in Melbourne's Ash Range (1992)[18]
Science in high places: the cultural significance of scientific sites in the Australian Alps: final report (co-author, with Libby Robin, 1994)[19]
Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (1996)
Ecology and empire: environmental history of settler societies (co-editor, with Libby Robin, 1997)[20]
Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (2001)[21]
A change in the weather: climate and culture in Australia (co-editor, with Tim Sherratt and Libby Robin, 2004)[22]
Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (2007)
Frontier, race, nation: Henry Reynolds and Australian history (co-editor, with Bain Attwood)[23]
Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System (co-editor, with Marcus Haward, 2012)
Living with fire: people, nature and history in Steels Creek (co-author, with Christine Hansen, 2012) – "examines how one community rebuilt and redefined itself following the Black Saturday fires"[24]
The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft (2016)[25]
1 2 Bamblett, Lawrence; Melleuish, Gregory; etal. (23 January 2025), Freeman-Greene, Suzy; Ley, James (eds.), 10 essential books to read on Australia Day – our expert picks, The Conversation, doi:10.64628/aa.ejggkatvk
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