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Thursday, May 16, 2024

Convictism and the Neolithic: A Response to Erik Olssen

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Prisoners under armed guard remove Bell Hill in Dunedin, c1875. Ref: P2014-014/3-003,  Hocken Library. If one’s book is “ like a friend that...
Sunday, April 21, 2024

Unfreedom Forest: A History of New Zealand’s Prison Plantations

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In February 2024 I gave a Friends of the Turnbull Library lecture on the history of New Zealand’s prison plantations, reproduced below. The ...
Saturday, March 30, 2024

'Blood and Dirt' recognised by the International Labor History Association

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Blood and Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand has received an International Labor History Association Honorable Mention Award...
Friday, December 8, 2023

'Blood and Dirt' one of the best books of 2023!

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Blood and Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand (BWB) has been out for four months now, and the positive feedback has been amaz...
Sunday, August 20, 2023

Prison labour, history-making and power: Notes on Trouillot’s 'Silencing the Past'

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Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History was published by Haitian writer and anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot in 1995....
Thursday, August 10, 2023

From Crew to the Chain Gang: Seamen, Prison Labour and ‘Improvement’ in Nineteenth Century New Zealand

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In this rare photograph taken in the late 1860s or early 1870s, the Lyttelton hard-labour gang are working at Officers Point. Lyttelton Muse...