Rate My Professor Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen

Associate Professor Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen is an Associate Professor in History in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, College of Human and Social Futures, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Sydney in 2007, examining the experiences of British volunteers in the Greek War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War, and the Russo-Finnish War. Previously, she held the position of Lecturer in History at Western Sydney University from 2010 to 2015. Elizabeth is a member of the University of Newcastle's Centre for the History of Violence, which has attracted over $2.5 million in ARC funding since 2012 for projects on violence in various contexts.

Roberts-Pedersen's research focuses on the cultural and social histories of warfare in the modern world, particularly the history of psychiatry, psychiatric patients, and treatment regimes during wartime. Her ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) project, ‘Unquiet Minds: Psychiatry in World War Two and its aftermaths’ (2016-2018), explores how the war influenced psychiatric theory and practice through encounters with combatants, POWs, Holocaust survivors, and children separated from parents. She has also led the ARC Discovery Project ‘A Century of Sex and the Australian Military, 1914-2020’ (2021-2023, with Prof Noah Riseman, Dr Tristan Moss, Dr Alana Piper) and secured additional funding from the College of Human and Social Futures, totaling over $524,778 across 11 grants.

Her publications include the monograph Freedom, Faction, Fame and Blood: British Soldiers of Conscience in Greece, Spain and Finland (Sussex Academic Press, 2010), Making Mental Health: A Critical History (Routledge, 2025), and Making Mental Health: A Global History (2023). Key articles are ‘The Hard School: Physical Treatments for War Neurosis in Britain during the Second World War’ (Social History of Medicine, 2016), ‘Impelled to Reminiscence: Millais Culpin, Military Psychiatry, and the Politics of Therapy’ (Health and History, 2015), ‘Damage: The 'war neurotic' serviceman comes home’ (History Australia, 2014), and others. She has guest-edited special issues of Health and History (2018) on trauma histories in Australasia and Australian Journal of Politics and History (2018) on European entanglements. Through her scholarship, she advances understanding of war trauma, PTSD, and psychiatric responses to conflict.