Tamson Pietsch
Associate Professor Tamson Pietsch
- Post Nominals: FAHA
- Fellow Type: Fellow
- Elected to the Academy: 2025
- Section(s): History
Biography
Tamson Pietsch is Associate Professor in Social and Political Sciences and Director of the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology Sydney.
Her research focuses on the history of ideas and the global politics of knowledge, with a particular focus on universities and other institutions of knowledge. She is the author of The Floating University: Experience, Empire and the Politics of Knowledge (Chicago, 2023) and Empire of Scholars: universities networks and the British academic world, 1850-1939 (Manchester, 2013), as well as nearly 30 scholarly articles and chapters. Tamson has been awarded funding from a variety of philanthropic and government bodies as well as the Australian Research Council. This has supported projects on the public history of Darlinghurst, the history of expertise in interwar Australia, the representation of historical events on Wikipedia, and the history of Australian democracy. Tamson’s current research focuses on the use of land endowments to support public education in Australia.
As Director of the Australian Centre for Public History Tamson founded GLAMSLAM as an annual event for the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums sector. She has served as President (2022-23) of the Australia and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES), Editor of the Q1 journal, History of Education Review (2017-24), and Advisory Editor for the Journal for the History of Knowledge, as well as on numerous Advisory and research Assessment Boards. Tamson is also the founder and Managing Director of UTS Impact Studios, an initiative that amplifies research engagement and impact by leveraging the power of audio and digital storytelling. Home to the History Lab podcast, its podcasts have received national and international awards. Tamson received her DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She has held academic posts at the Universities of Oxford and Sydney and Brunel University London. In 2026 she will hold the Merewether Fellowship at the State Library of New South Wales.