Dr Brett Bennett

Biography

Brett M. Bennett is a Lecturer in Modern History and an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow from 2011 to 2013. Currently, he is completing the ARC-Funded Saving the World the First Time (co-authored with Gregory A. Barton). He has published widely in leading peer-reviewed international journals and has been featured in numerous national and international media outlets including ABC National Radio’s The Science Show, The Australian, The Canberra Times and The Times Higher Education Supplement. In the medium-term (2-5 years), he is pursuing research projects on the global history of the world's forests.

He is developing ways to use history as an applied social science and scientific methodology to improve development and environmental management decision-making, particularly in regions surrounding the Indian Ocean. To this end, he is collaborating with the American forestry scientist Dr Jeff Wright to use historical records of experimental forest trials to help assess how climate change might influence the future planting of Australian trees in Australia and around the world. He is working with Dr Fred J. Kruger, former director of the South African Forestry Research Institute, on this project and also to assess potential biodiversity management policies that incorporate the theory of convergent evolution. He is also collaborating with Barton, Kruger and Wright to edit a book on the history of forestry in South Africa for a series he co-edits with Barton, ‘World Forest History’, published by the ANU E-Press.

Qualifications

PhD (History) University of Texas at Austin

MA (History) University of Texas at Austin

BA (Humanities) Indiana University

Areas of Research/Expertise 

Environmental History, Forestry, Biodiversity, Development Studies, Imperialism, Global History, History of Science, Indian Ocean Studies

Selected Grants 

2011-2013 Australian Research Council (ARC) Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (APD) $266,846 

2010 Alfred Bell Fellowship, Forest History Society 

2009-2010   Social Science Research Council (SSRC)-American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) International Dissertation Research Fellowship funded by the Mellon Foundation $24,500 USD 

2009-2010   National Science Foundation Science, Technology, and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant $14,500 USD

Publications 

Books 

Bennett, B.M. and Hodge, J.M. Edited. Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science Across the British Empire 1800-1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Articles 

Bennett, B.M. ‘Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa: Climate, Exotics and Experimentation’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2011): 265-280. 

Barton, G.A. and Bennett, B.M. ‘E.H.F. Swain’s Vision of Forest Modernity’, Intellectual History Review, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2011): 135-50. (50% contribution) 

Bennett, B.M. ‘A Global History of Australian Trees’, Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2011): 125-145. 

Bennett, B.M. ‘The El Dorado of Forestry: the Eucalyptus in India, South Africa and Thailand, 1850-2000’, International Review of Social History, Vol. 55, Supplement 18 (2010): 27-50. 

Barton, G.A. and Bennett, B.M. ‘“There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods”: The Culture of Forestry in British India’, The British Scholar Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2010): 219-234. (50% contribution) 

Barton, G.A. and Bennett, B.M. ‘Forestry as Foreign Policy: Anglo-Siamese Relations and the Origins of Britain’s Informal Empire in the Teak Forests of Northern Siam, 1883-1925’, Itinerario: International Journal of the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, Vo. 34, No. 2 (2010): 65-86. (50% contribution) 

Bennett, B.M. ‘A State, National, and Imperial Debate: The Rise and Near Fall of the Australian Forestry School, 1927-1945’, Environment and History, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2009): 217-44. 

Barton, G.A. and Bennett, B.M. ‘Environmental Conservation and Deforestation in India 1855-1947: A Reconsideration’, Itinerario: International Journal of the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2008): 83-104. (50% contribution)

Book Chapters 

Bennett, B.M. ‘The Consolidation and Reconfiguration of “British” Networks of Science, 1800-1970’, in Science and the British Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science Across the British Empire 1800-1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011): 30-44. 

Bennett, B.M. ‘A Networked Approach to the Origins of Forestry Education in India, 1855-1885’, in Science and the British Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science Across the British Empire 1800-1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011): 68-88. 

Barton, G.A. and Bennett, B.M. ‘A Case Study in the Environmental History of Gentlemanly Capitalism: The Battle Between Gentlemen Teak Merchants and State Foresters in Burma and Siam, 1827-1901’, in Africa, Empire, and Globalization: Essays in Honor of A.G. Hopkins, edited by Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2011): 317-332. (50% contribution)

Select Media and Essays 

Bennett, B.M. ‘A Contested Past and Present: Australian Trees in South Africa’, Social Science Research Council, Essays from the Field, 24 May 2011. 

Bennett, B.M. ‘Young Guns Hold Their Own Against World's Best’, The Australian, 23 Feb 2010: 41. 

Bennett, B.M. ‘Reading the Land: Changing Landscapes and the Environmental History of South Africa’, The Lie of the Land: Representations of the South African Landscape (Cape Town: Pinewood Studios, 2010): 46-59. 

Bennett, B.M. Interview by Robyn Williams for ABC Radio’s The Science Show, 3 July 2010 

Bennett, B.M. ‘Make a Museum out of the Former Australian Forestry School Building’, The Canberra Times, 28 April 2010: 11. 

Bennett, B.M. ‘Thinking of Moving Abroad? How to Begin Applying for Foreign Jobs’, Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association (April 2010): 29-30. 

Bennett, B.M. ‘Cuts are Inevitable, So Let’s Join the Debate’, Times Higher Education (Jan 7 2010): 30.