Conference Series


Previous Special One-Night Conference


Conference - The role of France in the development of the Australian Wine Industry

Friday 18 November - 6:30pm to 7:30pm
Alliance Française d'Adélaïde

From the earliest days of the first colony, British settlers wanted to establish vineyards in Australia but, with enthusiasm proving no substitute for experience they looked to France for guidance.
In the nineteenth century the fledgling industry benefited greatly from French experience, from French viticultural manuals and advice from French experts to individual visits to French vineyards. This conference reviews the contribution of France to the development of the Australian wine industry.






Presented by: Barbara Santich, Professor Emeritus at Adelaide University

Born and educated in NSW, Barbara gained her first degree at the University of NSW (B.Sc. Hons I). Her interest in food and eating was initially stimulated by her study of biochemistry and travels in Europe, including study in Paris. She subsequently completed a BA (French) at the  University of Minnesota and PhD (Flinders University of SA). Her thesis, 'Two Languages, Two Cultures, Two Cuisines', investigated the foods and cuisine of Mediterranean France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Her forthcoming book, Eating in 18th-century Provence: The Evolution of a Tradition, focuses on food and eating in Provence pre-Revolution and into the early nineteenth-century.

Barbara established postgraduate courses in food history and culture, and food writing, at the University of Adelaide. She is the author of nine books and her food writing has appeared in numerous Australian newspapers and magazines as well as overseas publications. As a member of the research committee of ISFAR (Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations) she has initiated the FRANCE, AUSTRALIA AND WINE research project, celebrating the important ongoing relationship between the two countries in relation to wine. The project will document the lives and achievements of the most significant players, both French and Australian, and add their biographies to the FADB

Previous Conference Series

History: 19th Century France: the era of revolutions, changes and experimentations



Conference I - Napoléon and the Premier Empire : Rise and Fall



Conference II - The return of the Monarchy 1814-1848



Conference III - The Republican Dream and the Second Empire, 1848-1870





Co-Presented by: Dr Romain Fathi & Claire Rioult

Dr. Romain Fathi is a French historian whose longstanding research interests are concerned with Australian national identity, the First World War and the history of public health. While researching Australian history, Romain is also passionate about the history of his own country, France, where he was born and raised.

He obtained a jointly awarded PhD with Sciences Po (Paris, France) and The University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia). Romain studied and taught in several universities including Sciences Po, Yale, the University of Queensland. He now holds a position of Senior Lecturer in History at Flinders University.

For more information on Romain’s research and publications, please see: https://romainfathi.com/my-story


Claire Rioult is a French PhD candidate with Monash University and the University of Warwick (UK) whose doctoral research explores French and British commercial diplomacies in Spain during the Age of Revolutions, with a special interest in how consuls and diplomats operated in a time of crisis and political upheaval. Claire graduated with a master’s degree from Sciences Po (Paris, France) and is agrégée d’histoire. Her master’s thesis explored maritime quarantine structures and practices against the plague in the late eighteenth century in the French Channel seaports.


History: The Making of France - from Clovis to Louis XVI



Conference I - The Merovingians and the Carolingians: the origins of France?



Conference II - The House of Capet and the House of Valois: strengthening the kingdom and the monarchy



Conference III - The Bourbons and the monarchie absolue

History: The French Revolution



Conference I - Making Revolution: 1789 France



Conference II - The causes of the French Revolution



Conference III - A Revolution that changed the world: the impacts of “1789”




Presented by: Dr. Romain Fathi

Dr. Romain Fathi is a French historian whose longstanding research interests are concerned with Australian national identity, the First World War and the history of public health. While researching Australian history, Romain is also passionate about the history of his own country, France, where he was born and raised.

He obtained a jointly awarded PhD with Sciences Po (Paris, France) and The University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia). Romain studied and taught in several universities including Sciences Po, Yale, the University of Queensland. He now holds a position of Senior Lecturer in History at Flinders University.

For more information on Romain’s research and publications, please see: https://romainfathi.com/my-story

Science: Les Voyages de Baudin



Conference I - The Science of the Baudin Expedition



Conference II - The Baudin Expedition and the Figure of the Scientific Voyager


Literature: French Poetry Through the Ages



Conference I - From the mediaeval epic to the poets of the Pléiade: celebrating great deeds, courtly love and the French language



Conference I - From the mediaeval epic to the poets of the Pléiade: celebrating great deeds, courtly love and the French language



Conference II - The Golden Age of French poetry: the nineteenth century Romantics




Presented by: John West-Sooby

John West-Sooby is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Adelaide. He has worked for many years on Nicolas Baudin’s voyage of discovery to Australia and has authored or co-produced numerous books and articles on the subject, including Encountering Terra Australis. The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders (with Jean Fornasiero and Peter Monteath), French Designs on Colonial New South Wales (with Jean Fornasiero), and The Art of Science: Nicolas Baudin’s Voyagers (1800–1803) (with Jean Fornasiero and Lindl Lawton).

He has also published widely on nineteenth-century French literature and on crime fiction (French and Australian). He currently has two books in preparation: the first is a collection of essays by eminent scholars on the science and the scientists of the Baudin expedition; the second is a volume of essays on French contributions to our cultural life, entitled What have the French ever done for us?

Cinema: French Cinema Through the Decades



Conference I - From Cinéma Muet to Les Enfants du Paradis



Conference II - La Nouvelle Vague and the 1960s



Conference III - Contemporary French Cinema




Presented by: Ben McCann

Ben McCann is Associate Professor of French Studies at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of Ripping Open the Set: French Film Design, 1930-1939, Le Jour se lève, Julien Duvivier, and L’Auberge espagnole: European Youth on Film. He is currently writing a book on the links between French and Japanese cinema.

He is interested in all areas of French Cinema; particularly in 1930s French 'Poetic Realist' cinema, set design and film decor, film adaptation, and the films of Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier, and Jean Dujardin.

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