FRANK BONGIORNO AM
Donald horne professor of history and public ideas, university of canberra

Frank Bongiorno AM is Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas at the University of Canberra and Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University. His books include The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (2015), Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia (2022) and A Little History of the Australian Labor Party (with Nick Dyrenfurth, second edition 2024).

associate professor CAROLYN HOLBROOK
Deakin University, School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Associate Professor Carolyn Holbrook is an historian at Deakin University. Her latest books are Challenging Anzac, co-edited with Mia Martin Hobbs and Joan Beaumont (UNSW Press, 2026) and Fair Life Chances? with James Walter (Melbourne University Press, 2026).

She is the director of the Australian Policy and History network and the Australian Health and History digital archive.

DR JOSHUA BLACK
National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

Dr Joshua Black is a political historian, policy researcher and speechwriter. He has published widely on Australia’s political culture in scholarly and mainstream forums.

HUGH WHITE AO
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF STRATEGIC STUDIES, STRATEGIC AND DEFENCE STUDIES CENTRE
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Professor Hugh White AO is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He studies Australian strategic and defence policy, and regional and global strategic issues as they affect Australia. He has been an intelligence analyst, a journalist, a senior staffer to Australian Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and a senior official in the Australian Defence Department, where from 1995 to 2000 he was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence.

He was the principal author of Australia’s Defence White Paper (2000). His recent publications include Power Shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing (2010), The China Choice: Why America should share power (2012), Without America: Australia’s future in the New Asia (2017), and How to defend Australia (2019). He writes a regular column for the Straits Times of Singapore.

Hugh White is a member of The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre Advisory Board, and has been a part of the Hawke Centre's Program, including the Annual Hawke Lecture (2014), From the Great War to the Asian Century: what we can learn from 1914 about our place in the world, Hugh White: Hard New World – Our Post-American Future, and as a panellist for Borders and the Pandemic (2020).