Join Dr Nicholas Ferns as he presents a lecture on his 2024 National Library Fellowship research into the history of the relationship between Australia and the World Bank, with a particular focus on the connections between international finance and national development at the National Library of Australia.
Entry is free to this event but bookings are essential.
The event will be available to view live online via the Library’s Facebook and YouTube pages. You do not need to book a ticket to watch the event online.
Dr Nicholas Ferns is a 2024 National Library of Australia Fellow, supported by the Stokes family.
About Dr Nicholas Ferns’ Fellowship research
Dr Ferns will undertake the first detailed history of the relationship between Australia and the World Bank, with a particular focus on the connections between international finance and national development. Throughout the 20th century, Australia engaged with major international organisations, such as the World Bank. These organisations helped to shape Australian foreign policy, as well as the processes of development and decolonisation in Australia. By examining the interactions between Australian officials and economic experts with the World Bank, this project expects to provide new knowledge on the connections between development and international finance that dictated post-war global politics. It will do this by examining the role of the World Bank in funding Australian agricultural development in the 1950s as well as major nation-building projects like the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme. Examining these projects, and the policies that enabled them, will offer enhanced understanding of the international significance of Australia’s post-war development. This has the potential to also inform ongoing Australian engagement with large, international organisations.
About Dr Nicholas Ferns
Dr Nicholas Ferns is an ARC DECRA Research Fellow in History at Monash University. He is a historian of development, empire and decolonisation, with a particular focus on Australia’s colonial administration in Papua New Guinea. His first book, Australia in the Age of International Development, 1945-1975 was published in 2020, and examined Australia’s colonial rule in Papua New Guinea and foreign aid policy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. He has also published in local and international journals on topics ranging from the decolonisation of Papua New Guinea to Australia’s behaviour in the United Nations. He is currently developing new research that explores the historical relationship between Australia and the World Bank.
About National Library of Australia Fellowships
The National Library of Australia Fellowships program offers researchers an opportunity to undertake a 12-week residency at the Library. This program is supported by generous donors and bequests.
Image credit: Sir Percy Spender, Photograph from Box 13 of the Spender Papers, Papers of Sir Percy Spender, 1937-1978, nla.cat-vn2759673
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