Rate My Professor John Ramsland

Emeritus Professor John Ramsland holds the position of Emeritus Professor of History in the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He was educated at Manly Boys High School and Bathurst Teachers College, earning a BA from the University of New England, an MEd from the University of Sydney, and both an MA and PhD from the University of Newcastle. His distinguished career at the University of Newcastle included serving as Professor of History, Head of School, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s. Upon retirement in 2003, he was appointed Emeritus Professor and continues as Adjunct Professor, acting as a PhD supervisor and examiner. Professor Ramsland is a historian and biographer whose research specializations include child welfare history, the Aboriginal experience, Australian sport and entertainment history, educational and voluntary institutions, and the histories of World War I and II.

Professor Ramsland has authored eighteen non-fiction books, such as Children of the Back Lanes: Destitute and Neglected Children in Colonial New South Wales (1986), With Just But Relentless Discipline: A Social History of Newcastle Boys High School, Brave and Bold, Remembering Aboriginal Heroes, Australia's Player King, The Legacy of Douglas Grant, and Venturing Into No Man's Land: Joseph Maxwell VC, World War I Hero. He has published over a hundred articles, book chapters, conference papers, and book reviews in Australia, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, and India, along with invited entries for the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Dictionary of Sydney. His achievements have earned him the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2006 for services to historical research in child poverty and abuse, the Indigenous experience, and institutional life in colonial Australia, as well as to education; the 2008 Non-fiction Openbook Prize of the NSW Writers Centre for Brave and Bold; the 2007 Isabella Brierley Prize for History for his essay on Barney Kieran; the 1983 Institution of Educational Research Prize for his doctoral thesis; Fellow of the College of Preceptors (UK) in 1983; Fellow of the Australian College of Educators in 1998; and the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wollotuka Institute of Aboriginal Studies at the University of Newcastle.