Rebecca Jones

Rebecca is a historian of the environment, climate and health.

My research expertise includes environmental history, climate history, health history, Australian history, agricultural history and rural health and well-being.  I have published widely in environmental history, drought history, organic farming and gardening as well as rural mental and emotional health.

Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia exploring resilience to drought in nineteenth and twentieth century Australia was published by Monash University Publishing in 2017. My new research explores the physical and emotional effects (including mental health) of extreme climatic events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the focus of the Australian Inland Mission.

I have experience both as an academic and applied (public) historian.  I have worked at the Australian National University and Monash University and held a Research Fellowship at the National Library of Australia in 2018 and the CH Currey Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales in 2020.  As a pubic historian I worked for Museum Victoria, Heritage Hill Museum, Heritage Victoria, Australian Heritage Commission, community groups and local government.

I am currently the History Council of South Australia Fellow.

Recently published: ‘Mapping the Inland: maps of the Australian Inland Mission and Flying Doctor Service of Service in the 1910s-1930s’, an essay exploring the concerns of the Australian Inland Mission through their maps.