AustLit

'We write this introduction in changed and challenging circumstances, with an acute awareness of how unevenly the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been distributed among the AHA membership and wider readership of History Australia, even as narratives of this crisis suggest that ‘we’ are all experiencing this ‘together in lockdown’. At the same time, the Australian Historical Association, this journal and its diverse membership are working to nourish our disciplinary community in a period when our connections with each other can no longer be embodied in the physical space of departments, conferences, seminars, museums and libraries. We are, for the moment, a community enacted almost entirely through virtual and other mediums, and these are meagre substitutes. Our weekly editorial meetings, once treasured moments of connection, laughter and collegiality around a table, now take place on Zoom, with words and phrases sometimes garbled or lost in their translation from sound, to data and back to sound again. Many of us are having to learn how to work together without being together. The loss is acute. We hope that the arrival of issue 17.2 reminds our members, authors and readers of their membership in a community of historians in, of or from Australia.' (Leigh Boucher, Michelle Arrow, Kate Fullagar, From the Editors, introduction)