Join us for canapés and drinks in the RSSS Foyer as Prof. Tom Griffiths launches Melanie Nolan’s Biography: an historiography (London and New York: Routledge, 2023).

Biography: An Historiography examines how Western historians have used biography from the nineteenth century to the present – considering the problems and challenges that historians have faced in their biographical practice systematically. This volume analyses the strategies and methods that historians have used in response to seven major issues identified over time to do with evidence, including but not limited to the problem of causation, the problem of fact and fiction, the problem of other minds, the problem of significance or representativeness, the problems of perspective, both macro and micro, and the problem of subjectivity and relative truth.

Emeritus Prof. Tom Griffiths AO was the W K Hancock Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He is currently Chair of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Among Tom's many publications is The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft (Black Inc., 2016), which was awarded the 2017 Ernest Scott Prize and the 2017 ACT Book of the Year Award.

Melanie Nolan is Professor of History, Director of the National Centre of Biography, and General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, in the School of History, at the Australian National University.