Summer Series 2025-6 Part 4: Selwyn Cornish, John Hawkins, Mark Lunney, & Eliezer Rubenstein Sturgess

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nation’. This fourth episode features Selwyn Cornish & John Hawkins's paper 'Menzies, Keynes and the Australian economists', Mark Lunney's paper 'A Judicial Commonwealth?', & Eli Rubenstein Sturgess's paper 'Equally Sacred Precincts: Why Lord’s was as central as Westminster to Menzies’s relationship with the British Commonwealth of Nations'.

Selwyn Cornish is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of History, Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and the Official Historian of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Selwyn Cornish is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of History, Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and the Official Historian of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

John Hawkins is deputy head of the Canberra School of Politics, Economics & Society at the University of Canberra. He was awarded a PhD in political science from the Australian National University for his thesis on the Australian treasurers. He also holds an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and an MA in politics and history from Macquarie University. He is co-editor of History of Economics Review. He previously worked in the Australian Treasury and the Reserve Bank and served as secretary of the Senate Economics Committee. He was interviewed for the Afternoon Light podcast in August 2023 on Menzies as treasurer.

Mark Lunney is a Professor at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia. His research interests are the law of tort, and the history of the common law and legal profession. His recent historical work has focused on the relationship between British race patriotism and representations of Australian legal exceptionalism from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. His monograph, A History of Australian Tort Law 1901–1945: England’s Obedient Servant? was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. In September 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

Eliezer ('Eli') Rubenstein Sturgess is a graduate of the University of Melbourne having completed a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma in Music. In 2024, he undertook an honours year in History under the supervision of Professor Joy Damousi and received first-class honours. He has applied to begin a PhD in History at the University of Melbourne starting 2026. Eli has an interest in the nexus between politics and cricket, and the often-overlooked role of cricket in the lives of Australia's political leaders.

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