Frank Bongiorno

Frank Bongiorno AM (born Nhill, Victoria, 1969) is an Australian labour, political and cultural historian. He joined the University of Canberra in 2026 as inaugural Director of the Vice-Chancellor's Centre of Public Ideas and Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas. He was previously Professor, and is now Emeritus Professor, at the Australian National University. He has also held lecturing positions at King’s College London (2007-11), the University of New England (2000-07) and Griffith University (1996) and previously at the ANU (1994). He was Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the ANU (1997-2000), and in 1997-8 was also Smuts Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge and Mellon Visiting Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He has worked as a historian for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Frank is Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University, Emeritus Professor of the ANU, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Humanities.

He is the author or co-author of four books and many articles and book chapters on Australian history. The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (Black Inc., 2012), won the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Book of the Year and was shortlisted in the Australian History category of the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the New South Wales Premier’s History Award. His The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (Black Inc., 2015), was shortlisted for the Ernest Scott Prize, the New South Wales Premier’s History Award and the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Book Award, and won ACT Book of the Year. Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia (La Trobe University Press, 2022) gained Frank his third ACT Book of the Year award as well as the Henry Mayer Book Prize of the Australian Political Studies Association. It was shortlisted for several other awards.

He has served on the New South Wales Arts Advisory Council and as a member of the New South Wales Ministry of the Arts Literature and History Committee, including as its chair for three years. He is presently Deputy Chair of the Advisory Council of the National Archives of Australia. He is also an Editorial Board member of Documents on Australian Foreign Policy (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Labour History, Journal of Australian Studies, the Australian Journal of Politics and History, and the Australian Journal of Political Science, and was co-editor of History Australia from 2013 until 2015. He is President of the Council for the Humanities Arts and Social Sciences and was Vice-President (2020-22) and then President (2022-24) of the Australian Historical Association.