History has been a sustained part of my intellectual and academic life, extending from my earliest education through formal postgraduate historical training and into my research in law, political economy, sociology, theology, linguistics and area studies.
My historical interests are particularly concerned with the long-term development of institutions, states, cultures, languages and systems of thought. I am interested in historical continuity and discontinuity: how institutions formed in one period survive, change their meaning or reappear in later political and social environments.
My principal areas of historical research have included China and East Asia; Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe; the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds; Ireland and Scotland; European religious and imperial history; and the historical development of political, economic and legal institutions.
I therefore approach history both as a field of scholarship in its own right and as indispensable to understanding contemporary societies.
Historical Education
My formal engagement with history began early. In 1987 I received the History Trophy at the South African Hellenic Educational and Technical Institute (SAHETI) for the highest primary-school performance in history.
I subsequently studied history in my final years of secondary education in Western Australia as a university-entrance subject, receiving a number of prizes for academic performance. My studies included the histories of China, Japan, Germany and the United States.
History remained an important component of my undergraduate Asian Studies education. My work on China and Southeast Asia required engagement with Chinese social and political history, imperial and modern China, colonialism, migration and the historical development of Southeast Asian societies. These historical interests subsequently became integral to my doctoral and postdoctoral research.
I later undertook formal postgraduate study in History at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, graduating with a Postgraduate Diploma in the History of the Highlands and Islands with Distinction.
This postgraduate programme provided advanced training in historical scholarship and methodology. My studies included Rivers, Ports and Coasts in European History; Royal Power, Propaganda and Performance in Early Modern Europe; Maritime Lives: Scottish Northern Isles; Primary Sources in History; Palaeography and Languages for North Atlantic History; and Alternatives in History.
The combination of historiography, primary-source work, palaeography, historical languages and substantive regional history provided an important methodological foundation for my subsequent historical research.
China and East Asian History
China has been one of the longest-standing areas of my historical scholarship.
My undergraduate Asian Studies training included Chinese social history, contemporary China and Chinese politics. My subsequent research required considerably deeper engagement with the historical formation of Chinese social, political and economic institutions.
This became particularly important in my PhD. My analysis of contemporary Chinese institutions required consideration of the historical development of the family, kinship, guanxi, business organisation, local government and relationships between formal state institutions and informal social organisation.
A central issue was historical persistence. The transformation of China through revolution, communist government and post-1978 economic reform did not necessarily erase earlier institutions. At the same time, it would be equally misleading to treat contemporary China simply as the continuation of an ancient civilisation. My work therefore examined the interaction between inherited Chinese social structures, revolutionary transformation, communist institutions, marketisation and globalisation.
My research into overseas Chinese business networks similarly required historical study of Chinese migration and the formation of transnational communities throughout Southeast Asia.
This historical dimension runs through much of my published work on China, Singapore, Hong Kong and ASEAN. Contemporary differences between these societies cannot adequately be understood without their different experiences of empire, colonialism, migration, political development and economic transformation.
Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe
Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe have become major areas of my more recent historical research.
I have undertaken detailed research into Russian and Ukrainian history and into the much longer development of the territories that now constitute Ukraine, including their relationships with Lithuania, Poland, Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the Habsburg world and the Soviet Union.
I am particularly interested in the dangers of projecting contemporary national boundaries and identities backwards onto periods in which political, linguistic, religious and cultural geography was organised very differently.
My research has examined the historical development of Muscovy and Russia, Russian imperial ideology, Ukrainian political and cultural development, Polish-Lithuanian history, language and imperial policy, and the relationship between religious institutions and political authority.
This historical work now provides an important foundation for my research in comparative political economy and sociology. Contemporary differences among Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and other societies of the region cannot be understood simply from their post-1991 institutions. They emerge from much longer and overlapping histories.
Empire and Imperial Ideology
Empire is a recurring theme across my historical research.
One area of particular interest has been the development of Moscow’s imperial ideology and the concept of Moscow as the Third Rome. I have examined the appropriation and transformation of Roman and Christian imperial concepts and their relationship to Byzantine and Western imperial traditions.
My research has considered connections and contrasts among the Roman, Byzantine, Holy Roman, Ottoman, Muscovite and Russian imperial traditions and the ways in which political authority has drawn upon religion, historical memory and claims of continuity to legitimate itself.
This includes work on the use of religion within Muscovite and Russian imperial development and on the relationship between imperial ideology, language and identity in Russia and Ukraine.
My work on royal propaganda has provided a comparative dimension, extending from the political performance and representation of the Stuart monarchy to Muscovite and Russian practices of royal and imperial representation.
I am interested not only in what empires controlled, but in how they explained themselves: the histories, symbols, religious claims, ceremonies and genealogies through which political power was represented as legitimate.
Byzantine, Christian and Ottoman History
Church history constitutes another substantial area of my historical study.
My four-year Master of Divinity involved numerous units dealing with the history of Christianity, from the early Church through later Christian institutional and intellectual development. My study of ancient Greek and Latin has also strengthened my ability to engage with the languages and intellectual traditions underlying this material.
My historical research has included the early Church, the Byzantine Empire, the development of relations between Eastern and Western Christianity, the Great Schism, the Council of Florence and Christianity under Ottoman government.
I have been particularly interested in the relationship between theological disagreement and political power. The separation of Eastern and Western Christianity cannot adequately be understood as an abstract theological dispute independent of imperial institutions, competing jurisdictions and different conceptions of political and ecclesiastical authority.
My work on the Great Schism and the Council of Florence has therefore intersected with my research into Byzantine and Holy Roman imperial traditions, while my study of the Church under the Ottomans raises different questions concerning religious continuity and institutional adaptation under a new imperial order.
Ireland, Scotland and the North Atlantic
Ireland and Scotland constitute another important strand of my historical research.
I undertook concentrated research into Irish history and culture in 2004 and 2005 and have continued to study Irish historical development, language and culture. My later postgraduate History programme in Scotland substantially extended this work into Scottish and North Atlantic history.
My research has included Gaelic continuity between Ireland and Scotland, the history and folklore of both societies, the Scottish Northern Isles, and the distinctive histories of Orkney and Shetland.
I have also examined the historical development of Lowland Scots and the relationship among language, religion, migration and identity.
One particular research strand has considered Calvinism, Lowland Scots and Ulster Scots and the movement of people, religious ideas and cultural assumptions between Scotland, Ulster and North America. This raises wider questions about the transmission of social institutions through settler populations and the long-term consequences of migration.
My work has also examined older connections across the Atlantic world, including questions of British continuity between Brittany and Wales.
Religion and Historical Social Institutions
Religion occupies an important position at the intersection of my historical and sociological research.
I am interested not merely in histories of churches as organisations, but in the ways religious traditions have contributed to the formation of social institutions.
My research increasingly compares European regions historically associated with Catholicism, Protestantism—particularly Calvinism—and Eastern Orthodoxy. I am interested in whether these different historical environments contributed to enduring differences in attitudes towards authority, community, individual responsibility, government, work, property and civic life.
I approach these questions historically rather than treating contemporary populations as straightforward representatives of historical religious traditions. Secularisation, industrialisation, migration, nationalism, communism, war and modern state-building have profoundly transformed European societies.
The historical question is therefore one of institutional inheritance and transformation: which elements persist, through what mechanisms, and under what circumstances do they cease to be socially significant?
Language as Historical Evidence
Language history has become increasingly important to my historical work.
My formal study of linguistics has included the history and mechanisms of language change. My language studies have also given me experience with Latin, Ancient and Koine Greek and a wide range of modern European languages.
This has contributed to research into the historical development of German and its changing geographical and social position within Europe; the development and political significance of Russian and Ukrainian; Gaelic and Scots linguistic history; and the relationship between language, migration and national identity.
Language can provide evidence of historical relationships that modern political geography obscures. Linguistic boundaries rarely correspond perfectly with political ones, while language standardisation can itself form part of state-building and national development.
This makes language particularly important to my work on empire. The promotion, suppression, classification or redefinition of languages can be an instrument of political power as well as a consequence of historical change.
Maritime and Economic History
My historical interests also include the relationship between geography, commerce, government and state formation.
My postgraduate work on rivers, ports and coasts examined the importance of waterways and maritime spaces in European development. My research into the Scottish Northern Isles similarly required attention to societies whose historical orientation towards maritime networks can be obscured when they are viewed retrospectively from modern national centres.
I have also researched Denmark’s taxation of passage through the Danish straits in the early modern period. This provides an especially interesting historical intersection between geography, sovereignty, international commerce and public finance: control of a strategically important maritime passage allowed political authority to convert geographical position into state revenue.
This research connects naturally with my much larger body of work on taxation and public finance. Fiscal systems are historical institutions. Changes in taxation illuminate changes in state capacity, sovereignty, commerce, property and relationships between rulers and populations.
European Comparative History
My European research has progressively expanded beyond individual national histories.
I have undertaken substantial work concerning the Holy Roman Empire and the histories of Germany and France, alongside detailed research on Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. I have also engaged extensively with academic historical literature concerning Latvia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands.
This comparative approach is important because modern national histories can conceal historical systems that crossed contemporary borders.
The Holy Roman Empire, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire each organised political and cultural space in ways that differ fundamentally from the modern nation-state. Understanding European history therefore frequently requires temporarily abandoning contemporary political geography.
This is one of the principles that increasingly informs my historical work: the past should not be reorganised simply to make it resemble the political map of the present.
Broader Historical Study
Since 2021 I have supplemented my principal historical research with further formal study across a wide chronological and geographical range.
At UWA I have studied the histories of ancient Greece and Rome and undertaken Latin. My theological studies have included Ancient Greek and extensive Church history.
Additional university study has included the emergence of the modern Middle East and the history of modern Israel through Tel Aviv University; the Dark Ages through the University of Padua; Russian culture and intercultural communication through the National Research University Higher School of Economics; methodological study of the Talmud through Northwestern University; intercultural studies through the University of Leeds; and the history of antisemitism through Yad Vashem.
These studies complement rather than replace my principal historical specialisms. Their value lies partly in widening the comparative framework through which I approach questions of empire, religion, nationalism, migration, identity and institutional change.
History in My Published Scholarship
Historical analysis appears throughout my academic publications even where the work has formally been classified within law, taxation or political economy.
My scholarship on China and Southeast Asia necessarily examines historical institutional development. My work on international taxation frequently considers the historical construction of fiscal systems and the international economic order. My research on Denmark has examined early-modern taxation and sovereignty. Other work has addressed Ukraine and Russia, while research presented in Latvia has engaged with Irish and European historical questions.
History in this work is not simply introductory background. It performs explanatory work.
A contemporary institution can rarely be understood simply by examining its current legal form. Its operation may depend upon earlier institutions, inherited distributions of authority, historical experiences, linguistic and religious divisions, migration, imperial rule or memories of conflict.
This historical approach has consequently become increasingly important to my political-economy and sociological research.
Historical Method and Interdisciplinary Scholarship
My historical work combines formal postgraduate methodological training with an interdisciplinary perspective.
My postgraduate History studies included primary-source methodology, palaeography and historical languages. My legal training contributes highly developed skills in documentary interpretation and evidentiary analysis. Linguistics contributes an understanding of language change and textual meaning. Theology provides access to religious intellectual traditions and Church history. Political economy and sociology provide ways of investigating the institutional consequences of historical development.
My field research in China has also reinforced an important methodological lesson: formal documents describe only part of institutional reality. Understanding a society frequently requires comparison among official records, intellectual traditions, historical scholarship and evidence concerning how institutions actually operated.
I am particularly attracted to comparative and longue durée historical questions. I want to understand not merely what happened at a particular moment, but how institutions and ideas travelled through time: how Roman concepts were appropriated by later empires; how religious institutions survived changes of political order; how languages became associated with nations; how migration transported social institutions; and how imperial structures continued to affect societies after empires themselves disappeared.
My Work as a Historian
I regard history as a substantial component of my mature interdisciplinary scholarship.
My credentials include postgraduate historical study completed with distinction; formal training in historical methodology, primary sources, palaeography and historical languages; extensive Church and ancient history study; Asian historical training extending back to my undergraduate education; research in European, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Southeast Asian, Irish and Scottish history; and a publication record in which historical analysis repeatedly contributes to research in law, political economy and institutional studies.
I do not confine that work to a single period or national history. The strongest continuity lies instead in a set of historical problems: empire and political legitimacy; religion and social institutions; language and identity; migration and transnational communities; state formation and public finance; and the persistence of institutions across periods of profound political change.
These interests ultimately converge upon a question that also connects history to my wider scholarship:
How does the accumulated experience of the past continue to structure the institutions, identities, ideas and relationships through which societies understand and organise themselves in the present?
