Rate My Professor Yorick Smaal

Associate Professor Yorick Smaal is a historian affiliated with the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, where he holds the position of Senior Lecturer in History. He teaches undergraduate courses on subjects including sexuality, cross-cultural world history, and related topics. Smaal supervises research students across Honours, Masters, and PhD levels, with several PhD candidates nominated for Vice Chancellor's excellence awards. He graduated from the University of Queensland with an MPhil in 2004 and a PhD. His career includes roles such as ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Research Fellow from 2014 to 2018, Deputy Director of the Harry Gentle Resource Centre, and Research Associate on the ARC-funded Laureate Prosecution Project. Smaal serves on the editorial team of Queensland Review and has contributed to various professional activities.

Smaal's research specializations encompass the histories of sexuality and violence, queer identities, child sexual abuse, courts martial in World War I, prosecutions, and intimate lives in institutional settings. He is an internationally recognised historian whose socially engaged scholarship connects historical analysis with contemporary concerns. His work has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Griffith University, and the Australian Army History Unit, including international fellowships such as the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Spring Visiting Fellowship. Key publications include the monograph Sex, Soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45: Queer Identities in Australia in the Second World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); the edited collection The Sexual Abuse of Children: Recognition and Redress (Monash University Publishing, 2016); articles such as "Character, Discipline, Law: Courts Martial in World War I" (Australian Historical Studies, 2020), "Sexual Violence and Male Prisons: An Australian Queer Genealogy" (Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 2019), and "Historical Perspectives on Child Sexual Abuse, Part 1" (History Compass, 2013); and edited special journal issues including Queer Queensland (Queensland Review, 2007) and The Family in Australia (Journal of Australian Studies, 2013). Through these contributions, Smaal has advanced understandings of gender, war, law, and criminal justice in Australian history.