Explorer’s Retrospective on Public History and Performance
Author: Liam Pointing, Macquarie University, IFPH Explorers Intern.
Since 2022, the IFPH Explorers has partnered with Macquarie University to offer an internship program for students interested in public history. During the internship, students engage in a variety of activities, including writing blog posts for Bridging, reviewing IFPH Explorers events, or developing their own public history-related topics. The program aims to offer students an alternative to traditional academic writing by encouraging more accessible, engaging, and public-facing narratives.
Many interns go through several drafts before discovering how to effectively communicate with broader audiences. The IFPH Explorers particularly values student-led initiatives—when interns choose to write about topics they are personally passionate about, the results are often outstanding. This freedom to connect personal interests with public history fosters creativity, critical thinking, and deeper engagement with the field. - Jimena Perry

Public history at its core is history as encountered and consumed by the public, removed from the recesses of academic halls but still shaped by it. In this manner, we meet history through modes far more varied. Non-traditional forms of history writing have been present in cultures for thousands of years, yet they encounter resistance in finding a place in a Western, Global-North centric academia. Professor David Dean’s new book Performing Public History: Case Studies in Historical Storytelling, “explores history-telling as a performance across a wide range of media, including theatre and film, historical re-enactments and living history performances, operas, and video games.” It invites us to consider “what history is, and how and why we do it.” Dean was joined by Professor Thorsten Logge in the latest International Federation for Public History Explorers event titled Public History and Performance. Having both worked with theatre professionals, they provide fascinating insights on dovetailing history with artistic mediums.
Dean stated that he was driven to write the book as he was tired of colleagues dismissing non-traditional forms of history as inferior; he wanted to challenge the assumption that “distant objectivity” is the best way to conduct “proper” history. Both were drawn to investigate the synergies between theatre and their work as historians. Logge observed that history as a profession follows rules and regulations and is performed on stages (the stages are classrooms!). In historical work and theatre, you have the freedom to curate what you imagine and create a narrative. During this creative process, we privilege certain stories over others and hope to create what the audience deems acceptable history. Logge referenced this notion in panorama painters of the nineteenth century, and Dean with contemporary video games. There is a constant tension between how far you will go as a historian to accommodate the audience’s expectations.
Being professors, Dean and Logge both addressed the issue of evaluation. Drawing on his own experiences in teaching, Dean argues that mapping out equivalences—for example, a dance could be an essay—helped alleviate some anxieties around evaluation. Interdisciplinary colleagues and students can be helpful sources to draw upon to construct evaluation methodologies. Evaluating non-traditional forms requires a different approach to standard assessments. Dean said a reflection on the process is one of the most critical components and allows teachers who are not attuned to the subtleties of dance or poetry to still sufficiently assess within familiar academic parameters. Logge concurred, adding that grading the reflection allows students who have been conditioned through a BA program, to feel comfortable expressing their ideas through a creative piece. By having the creative piece separate to the reflection and evaluation, a space is enabled for the students’ subjectivities, emotions, imaginations, and senses to be more fully realised than if under the spectre of “academic assessment”.
There was a constant theme to bring back subjectivities and emotions in historical work. Dean discussed history students who experienced non-traditional forms of history, who then wanted to create what they had seen. There is a desire amongst students to be able to convey what they had been writing about in essays through a different medium yet experiencing pushback and being told ‘that is not how we do it’, under the pretence of conducting ‘proper’ history. For students that have creative experience from earlier in their lives, being told to suppress their creative tendencies reinforces existing attitudes towards non-traditional historical media.
When hearing Dean and Logge talk about the necessity of making history more personable, it seems strange to think it has gone so far in the opposite direction at times. Logge referred to the “backpacks we carry due to our socialisation and personal biographical histories,” which we cannot escape. Having these elements reflected in our work acknowledges that ineffable aspect of the human condition, that which makes us who we are. Omitting them denies our humanity. All of this can happen within academia’s rules and regulations. They make our subjectivities transparent and as Dean said, gives us “engagement with a purpose”. Logge mentioned the importance of still learning historiographical practices properly and then deciding how you want to experiment. We cannot destroy conventions and norms, but we can shift them in a more vibrant direction.
Acknowledging the irony in writing a book on this topic, Dean said through the book he is “regifting what I had been gifted by these theatre professionals”. Dean’s experience speaks to the value of interdisciplinary interaction. IFPH Explorer’s Project Manager, Dr. Jimena Perry stated how encouraging it is to hear these sorts of discussions, as she has been telling her own students the importance of enjoying your work and liking what you do. For some, that joy comes through non-traditional means.
“Historians are after all the dramaturges of the past,” is the quote the book ends on. It sums the message up well. History and theatre are processes of creation, not retrieval, as we are “negotiating within ourselves about how we tell our stories”. Dramaturges create narratives that work for everyone involved, not just the writer. Historians also do this when they negotiate histories. Dean and Logge both acknowledged they become “dramaturges of the past” and history as a profession would be for the better if it embraced this idea. This was an enlightening discussion, one that not just historians, but anyone can take value from. Everyone confronts history in some form. Dwelling on these points allows us to contemplate, as historians, the value of non-traditional forms of history and how we can push for a more inclusive history. Not all the public is drawn to the written form, and public history is, after all, for the public.
| Liam Pointing is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Arts in Modern History and Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, which he expects to complete at the end of this year. He is interested in the impacts of imperialism across time, and how it still shapes the world today. |
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Bridging Editor (May 26, 2026). Explorer’s Retrospective on Public History and Performance. IFPH-FIHP. Retrieved June 7, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/169u8

