SCHOOL COMMUNITY HUB
Community Speaker Series - August 2025
| Date | Tuesday 12 August 2025 7.00pm - 8.00pm |
| Location | Higgins Theatrette Nigel Peck Centre for Learning and Leadership Melbourne Grammar School 47 Domain Road, Melbourne VIC 3004 |
| Cost | Free of charge. Bookings are essential. |
Join us for the August edition of the Community Speaker Series to hear Australian historian, Professor Marilyn Lake AO, speak on 'The Victorian Idealists who Founded the Commonwealth of Australia'.
Bookings close 12.00pm, Monday 11 August 2025.
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ABOUT PROFESSOR MARILYN LAKE AO
Marilyn Lake grew up in Tasmania, and has then has held a number of academic positions at Monash University, The University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. Between 2001 and 2002 Marilyn held the Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University. Her most recent book, Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform (Harvard University Press, 2019), was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in 2020.
The Commonwealth of Australia was founded by key Victorian idealists: Alfred Deakin, Vida Goldstein, HB Higgins and Charles Pearson. They advocated what was often called state socialism to institutionalise democratic, collectivist and egalitarian values. In her talk Marilyn will show the influence of these ideals - including concepts such as the living wage and women's rights - on American progressives, but also how progressivism itself rested on racialised evolutionary thinking that contrasted advanced societies with backward or primitive ones. The Commonwealth of Australia exemplified these complexities.
