Dr Benjamin Jones is an Australian historian and social commentator. He has authored or edited several books and been published widely in the academic and mainstream press, mainly on Australian political history, especially national identity and republicanism. Jones is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Studies Institute, and has served as National Secretary of the Australian Historical Association. He has held teaching and research positions at several Australian universities as well as international Visiting Fellowships at Durham University in the UK, Indiana University in the USA, and Universität zu Köln in Germany.
Jones is a research-active historian and has been awarded competitive national and international grants, including from the Australian Research Council. In 2020 he was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Researchers (mid-career) at Central Queensland University. He has also been an invited keynote speaker at several international conference including the 2020 ANZSANA conference at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, the 2018 Politics in a Post-Truth World symposium at Collegium Civitas, Poland, and the 2016 Winter Institute at Peking University.
As well as academia, Jones is a qualified high school teacher and is passionate about the transformative power of education. He has published on the value of study abroad trips for students and the importance of building cross-cultural competency. He has given guest talks and has published articles for the Queensland History Teachers Association.
The beauty of semester break is that I can finally turn my eyes from marking essays to some of the books and articles I’ve been