Does history have a future in Canberra?

We live in a world wherean understanding of history often seems an inadequate guide to the present and future, yet it is also among the very few tools we have. Canberra has long been a place where history is produced, in a range of forms, and it has been understood as offering this kind of guidance. Canberra history-making has resisted the allure of the ivory-tower; it has frequently been an injunction to act in and on the world, not merely to understand it. In this year’s Canberra Day Oration, Frank Bongiorno will explore Canberra as a place of ‘history-making’, and he will consider what a future for history in Canberra might look like – in an era where sound historical practice can seem almost countercultural.   

Canberra Day Oration 2026

From foundation in 1953, the Canberra & District Historical Society has promoted the annual observance of Canberra Day on 12 March. In the following years the Society celebrated Canberra Day in a variety of ways, including Pioneer Gatherings, exhibitions, essay competitions, orations and commemorations at the Commencement Stone. From 2002 the Society re-introduced the Canberra Day Oration, with Professor Don Aitkin as the first orator. Since then, the Canberra Day Oration has been an annual event, held on 12 March. 

About Frank Bongiorno

Frank Bongiorno AM is inaugural director of the Vice-Chancellor’s Centre of Public Ideas, and Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas, at the University of Canberra. He was previously Professor of History at the Australian National University and is Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University. He has also held academic appointments at King’s College London, the University of New England, Griffith University and the University of Cambridge, where he was Smuts Visiting Fellow. Frank is the author of several works of Australian history, including The Eighties: The Decade that Transformed Australia and Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia. He is on the Advisory Council of the National Archives of Australia and the Editorial Board of the Documents on Australian Foreign Policy series within DFAT. Frank is Immediate Past President of the Australian Historical Association and current President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Humanities.