Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations

The theme of the Robert Menzies Institute’s 2025 Annual Conference is Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations. It marks 90 years since Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies’s first trip to Britain.

The conference will explore the enduring impact of Britain on Australia’s systems of governance, institutions, economy and broader culture which remain influential despite the notion of Britishness no longer being salient to the Australian identity and everyday life.

The 24 speakers at the conference include historians and academics from across Australia and the UK.

The fifth Annual Conference of the Robert Menzies Institute is the first of a new trilogy of annual conferences on the theme Forging Australia: The Global Forces that Shaped a Nation.

The keynote speaker at the Conference is Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History at the University of Newcastle, UK. He is also the President of the Britain and the World Society.

Conference Dinner: This year, the conference also includes an intimate Conference Dinner at Woodward Centre, University of Melbourne, on Thursday 27 November 2025. The event includes a Q&A between Georgina Downer, CEO, Robert Menzies Institute and chief guest Martin Farr. The tickets for the dinner must be purchased separately.

Details of the Conference
Date: Thursday 27 November and Friday 28 November 2025
Time: 8am-5pm
Venue: Library, North Wing, Old Quad, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052
Tickets: Free for RMI members / Between $125 and $300.

Details of the Conference Dinner
Date: Thursday 27 November 2025
Time: 6:30pm-9pm
Venue: Woodward Centre, Law Building, 10th floor, 106/185 Pelham St, Carlton VIC 3053
Tickets: $150.

The speakers at the event will include:

Alex McDermott & Henry Ergas: When Menzies met Baldwin: Australian and English conservatism, difference and convergence
Andrew Kemp: A very different world: Robert Menzies, Harold Macmillan, and the end of Greater Britain
Charles Richardson: Menzies, Burkean liberal or Burkean conservative?
Dan Brettig: Menzies, Cricket and the Cold War
David Furse-Roberts: A Twentieth Century Australian Whig: Robert Menzies and the Nineteenth Century British Liberal Tradition
David Lee: Menzies and Imperial Unity, 1934-1942
Eliezer Rubenstein: ‘Equally Sacred Precincts’: Why Lord’s was as central as Westminster to Menzies’s relationship with the British Commonwealth of Nations
Greg Melleuish: Being British, Being Australian
Josh Woodward: ‘Enlarged horizons and excited imagination’: Re-reading Robert Menzies’s 1935 overseas diary
Kit Kowol: ‘I could not help wondering whether I had an insight into Britain's future’: Australia in the post-war British Conservative Political Imagination
Lee Rippon: Britain, Australia, the Empire and prisoner of war diplomacy, 1939 – 1942Lucas McLennan: Menzies and Diefenbaker- Navigating the post-British World Lyndon Megarrity: Anxious to be Seen and to Belong: Queensland, Royalty and the British Commonwealth
Mark Lunney: A Judicial Commonwealth?
Michael de Percy: God, King, and Country: British Identity and the Australian Defence Force
Paul Brown: Sons of Empire: Menzies, Downer and their response to Britain joining the EEC
Peter Kurti: From Britishness to Pluralism: Civic Identity in Post-Imperial Australia
Teesta Prakash: Menzies, Commonwealth and Kashmir
Tim Rowse: Menzies's disenchantment with the British Commonwealth
Troy Bramston: Menzies and Churchill in War and Peace
Selwyn Cornish & John Hawkins: Menzies & Keynes
Stewart Gill: Canada and Australia in the Commonwealth: Robert Menzies’s Relationship with Mackenzie King to Lester Pearson
Sue Thompson: Menzies’s Balancing Act in Southeast Asian Security
Wayne Reynolds: Navigating Imperial Overstretch east of Suez: Menzies and Australian foreign and defence policies 1935-1965

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