2022 Professor Marian Quartly: Friendly society or force for nationalism?

The ANU Archives 2022 Annual Lecture was held 3 November 2022 in conjunction with the Friends of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre. The recording is now available to watch online.

About the lecture 

Friendly Societies provided mutual assistance, social connection, and financial benefit to many people in a time before the existence of health insurance companies and broad government social security schemes. Although non-sectarian and non-partisan, friendly societies and their members were active for social and political causes. The Noel Butlin Archives Centre holds records from many major Friendly Societies, including the Australian Natives Association.  

Professor Emerita Marian Quartly delved into the nature of this particular Friendly Society and the role it played in an important period of Australia’s history. 

About the speaker 

Marian Quartly is Professor Emerita in the Monash School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies. Her most cited works are Creating a Nation (2006), and Australians 1838 (1987). More recently she has published a history of the National Council of Women of Australia, Respectable Radicals (2015), and a history of Australian adoption, The Market in Babies (2013).  She is currently completing a history of her own family that will contribute to the disciplines of both family history and South Australian history.