Associate Professor Robert Lee

• Biography
• Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise
• Grants / Current Projects
• Awards and Recognition
• Selected Publications
• Professional Works
  
• Contact Details 

Biography

Robert Lee was educated at Macquarie and Sydney Universities. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney where has taught history since 1979.

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Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

Asian History.
History of Western Imperialism in Asia.
Transport and Communications History (especially in Asia and Australia).
Technology Transfer.
Australian History.

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Grants / Current Projects

Robert Lee is currently working on a biography of Harold Young, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the New South Wales Government Railways from 1932 to 1951 and Area Controller for War Production for New South Wales from 1939 to 1945.

Contract with the Victorian Department of Infrastructure for the writing of The Railways of Victoria.

Contract with the Australian Heritage Commission to produce write ‘Linking a Nation’ and prepare a list of significant sites in Australia’s transport and communication history.

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Awards and Recognition

The Railways of Victoria, 1854-2004 was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s History Prize for 2007.

The Institution of Engineers Australia awarded its 1991 Engineering Excellence Award in the Heritage and Engineering Category to The Greatest Public Work.

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Selected Publications

Books

Fruits of Federation: the Grafton-Brisbane Uniform Gauge Railway and Clarence River Bridge, Sydney, Loco Works Publications (in association with Engineering Heritage Australia), 2009.

The Railways of Victoria, 1854-2004, Melbourne, Melbourne University Publishing, 2007.

Colonial Engineer: John Whitton (1819-1898) and the Building of Australia’s Railways, Sydney University of New South Wales Press, 2000.

The Greatest Public Work: The New South Wales Railways, 1848-1889, Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1988.

France and the Exploitation of China, 1885-1901: A Study in Economic Imperialism, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1990.

Online Book

Linking a Nation: Australia's Transport and Communications 1788 - 1970. Australian Heritage Council. Online at http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ahc/publications/commission/books/linking-a-nation/index.html.

Recent Articles and Chapters (since 2003)

‘Railway Sites and World Heritage Status: Some Australian Reflections of Indian Experience’, Historic Environment, ICOMOS Australia, 21, 2, July 2008, 7-10.

‘French Finance and Railway Construction in Northern China, 1895-1905’ in Ralf Roth and Günter Dinhobl (eds), Across the Borders: financing the world’s railways in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008, pp 241-254.

‘Dislocation and Flight’ [Review article of Bob Ellis, Night Thoughts in a of Time of War; Richard Lunn, Leaving Year Zero: Stories of Surviving Pol Pot’s Cambodia; Jennifer Zheng, One Woman’s Flight for Freedom and Falun Gong], Southerly 65, 2, 2005, 134-139.

‘Railways, Space and Imperialism’, Mitteilungen des Österreicheschen Staatsarchivs, 1, 2004, 91-106.

‘Les trios vies successives d’un atelier ferroviaire du XIXe siècle : Eveleigh (Sydney, Australie), Revue d’histoire des chemins de fer, 28-29 printemps-automne 2003, 561-584.

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Professional Works

Between 1999 and 2007 he undertook three missions for UNESCO’s International Council on Monuments and Sites to India to assess successful applications for three mountain railways to be inscribed as World Heritage Sites. These are:

1. Darjeeling Himalayan Railway
2. Nilgiri Mountain Railway
3. Kalka-Shimla Railway

In 2008 he wrote descriptions of exhibits for the new railway museum at Thirlmere NSW for Convergence Design.

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