Congratulations to our graduate student James Lesh (PhD 2018, At the intersection of heritage preservation, urban transformation, and everyday life in the twentieth-century Australian city) who has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship supported by the Ethel Mary Chettle bequest in the University of Sydney’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning, starting in May 2019.

The focus of his work will be conducting Sydney-based archival research on urban heritage, preparing his monograph for publication, and developing future projects. James will also be working on a co-edited book collection (with Dr Rebecca Madgin, University of Glasgow) on the topic of urban heritage, place attachment and emotion, to be published by Routledge in 2020.

Prior to heading to Sydney, James will be contributing to a panel discussion hosted by the History Council of Victoria and the Australian Heritage Festival on Historians, Places and the Past. You can also catch his musings about urban history on his history.city blog.