Quarantine and Border Control

From my early book Imperial Hygiene (2004) to the recent edited collection Quarantine: Local and Global Histories (2016), I have worked on the history and processes of medico-legal border control across the world, tracking the epidemiology, politics, law and culture of segregation, isolation, and quarantine. Three edited books – Contagion (2001), Isolation (2003) and Medicine at the Border (2006) – tackled histories and geographies of biosecurity, all prehistories of a coronavirus world.

‘Geographies of Commemoration: Angel Island, San Francisco and North Head, Sydney‘ Journal of Historical Geography, 52 (2016): 15.25.

‘Rethinking Quarantine: Pacific History at Australia’s Edge‘, Australian Historical Studies, 46, 3 (2015): 392-409.

‘At the Border: Contagion, Immigration, Nation‘, Australian Historical Studies, 33, 120 (2002): 344-358.

History of Immigration

Working outwards from the history of quarantine law, I have researched the related emergence of immigration restriction from the middle of the 19th century onward. The strange modern history of immigration control links also to population and eugenics.

‘The Right to Asylum: The 1905 Aliens Act and the Evolution of Refugee Law‘, Law and History Review, 32, 2 (2014): 309-350.

‘Immigration Restriction: Rethinking Period and Place from Settler Colonies to Postcolonial Nation‘, Journal of Global History, 9, 1 (2014): 26-48.

‘Immigration and Health: Law and Regulation in Australia, 1901-1958‘, Health and History, 6, 1 (2004): 97-112.

‘Immigration and Health: Law and Regulation in Australia, 1958-2004‘, Health and History, 7, 1 (2005): 86-101.

‘Asylum-Seekers and National histories of Detention‘, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 48 (2002): 509-527.

‘Insanity and Immigration Restriction’ in Migration, Health, and Ethnicity in the Modern World (Palgrave, 2013): 14-35.