I am a historian and social scientist, and I currently head the Heritage Project at Cancer Council Victoria. Founded in 1936, the Council has a long history of contributing to cancer control science–including medical research, epidemiology, and behavioural science–and being a major driver of cancer prevention advocacy. The Heritage Project aims to uncover this history and use it in collaboration with galleries, libraries, archives, and museums to create to strengthen public trust in the Council’s work and inspire those who were previously unaware of the continuing effort to control cancer.
I bring a broad range of experiences to this position. I completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2015 and a graduate certificate in learning and teaching in 2016. I am currently completing a Masters of Public Health at the University of New South Wales to improve my knowledge of public health research and strategies. I have worked at universities across Australia in learning and teaching, as a lecturer at every level from foundation studies through to postgraduate coursework, and I completed a three-year research-only, university-funding postdoctoral fellowship at the University of New England (UNE). At UNE, I was the only postdoctoral fellow in the humanities and social sciences funded in my round.
My research and publications have been equally broad. For much of my career, it has focused in governance and institutions in modern Germany, the United States, and Britain, with a particular emphasis on crime and criminal justice. In that track, I have published one sole-authored book, The Art of Occupation (2019), with Ohio University Press, and co-edited two collections. The first, Fear in the German-Speaking World was published by Bloomsbury in 2020. The second, History & Crime, is forthcoming with Emerald Publishing.
My current world with Cancer Council Victoria extends to three current research projects. The first examines cultures of sun and skin cancer in Australia (with the University of Melbourne). The second is in partnership with Swinburne University Film and Television and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) on histories of anti-tobacco advertising. The third book on the history of the Victorian Cancer Registry and cancer epidemiology–Cancer Data for Good–is forthcoming with Palgrave Publishing in late 2022.
Thomas J. Kehoe 