Photo: SPA 34M sourced by Romain Fathi

Human Remains

The body as an object of historical investigation has long interested me. My first book, published in 2013, dealt with the representation of living and dead bodies in First World War museums. Since then, I have accumulated primary sources pertaining to bodies at war and in war, in a First World War context in particular. 

More recently, I have started to focus on corpses, as a lens of inquiry to understand aspects of conflicts that remain unexplored. As a historian of commemoration, I have always been puzzled by the gaps that exist between noble and romanticised war commemorations and the ways in which the dead were actually dealt with on the battlefields. 

This interest in the treatment of human remains at war has led me to publish a pioneering article on the Australian Graves Detachment and its role in exhuming and re-burying the war dead after WWI, together with a more recent study on the work of the Australian Graves Services.”

Corpses in wars are a current program of work for me, one in which I conduct pilot research to develop a much wider transnational and multilingual project that would investigate how belligerent states during WWI dealt with the disposal of millions of cadavers. 

The number of corpses to be disposed of in so little time and so little space was an unprecedented phenomenon for European armies that had enforced the mass conscription of their citizens. Corpses represented a significant health concern for they are the vehicles of pathogens. Getting rid of them, even temporarily, became a medical priority.

To develop this investigation, I am currently working on an article about cremation in the military in First World War France. Recently, I was invited by the European PIMo network to discuss my preliminary avenues of investigation on this research (video below):

Acknowledgement of Country

I acknowledge the Kaurna People as the traditional owners and custodians of the land in which I am privileged to live and work. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples across what is now known as Australia.

I recognise the importance of continuing to educate myself about the ways in which these living cultures have developed over tens of thousands of years, and I express my sincere gratitude for being able to share a small part of this ongoing journey. As a historian, I support the Uluru Statement from the Heart and I remain impressed by its generosity.