Dr Julie McIntyre

My research on agriculture, science and environments focuses on how the growing, making, selling, drinking and export of Australian grape wine is a window to economic development, changing identities and landscapes. These inquiries cross into histories of alcohol production, science, capitalism, drinking cultures and tourism - most recently in Hunter Wine: A history (with John Germov, NewSouth, 2018). I also argue for the need to conceptualise 'global' as a re-entanglement of social, environmental and economic historical factors in settler capitalist communities - a notion that frames the State Library of NSW 2018 Merewether Fellowship project titled 'Settlers in the Empire of Science: William Macarthur, James King and Australian agricultural modernity'. 

My 2019 Fulbright Senior Scholarship project is titled Making the Modern Wine Industry through American-Australian scientific exchange, 1955-1977. This project's research at the Shields Library, University of California (Davis) is focused on the 1955 visit of viticulturalist Harold Olmo from Davis to Western Australia and the subsequent binational knowledge exchange and production in viticulture and oenology.

In 2004 I completed a Bachelor of Arts (Hons First Class) at the University of Newcastle, for which I earned Faculty and University Medals. This led to an Australian Postgraduate Award to undertake a PhD (History) at the University of Sydney. My PhD thesis, conferred in 2009, is titled A "Civilised" Drink and a "Civilising" Industry: Wine growing and cultural imagining in colonial New South Wales. In 2010 I held the Rydon Fellowship at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies (MCAS), King's College London. This fellowship enabled access to archives at the British Library and Kew Gardens to explore histories of economic theories and the sciences connected with wine growing in colonial Australia. 

I have published in major journals including Australian Historical Studies, the Journal of Australian Studies and Australian Economic History Review and Global Food History. My monograph First Vintage: Wine in Colonial New South Wales (UNSW Press, 2012) received a international publishing prize and was shortlisted for a NSW Premier's History Award, as well as other honours. 

Hunter Wine: A history is the Wine Communicators of Australia 2018 Best Wine Book. In 2019 it was one of three finalists in the NSW Community & Regional History category of the NSW Premier's History Awards and received a Special Mention in the History category of the OIV Awards of the International Organisation of the Vine & Wine. 

Through researching wine environments and communities I have been drawn to more closely investigate places at the peripheries of Australian history. This has led to a new project titled Australia's Atlantic on which I am joined by Robert Mason from Griffith University. This transimperial study of British imperial mobilities to non-British supply port settlements in the making of Australia currently encompasses Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Funchal and Rio de Janeiro. I am interested too in the historical impact of coal mining and export in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley and am exploring this past in collaboration with Nancy Cushing, Newcastle Region Libraries and Newcastle Museum.

I lead the University of Newcastle's Wine Studies Research Network in the Centre for 21st Century Humanities, serve on the steering committee of the Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network and am Assistant Editor (Humanities and Social Sciences) for the Journal of Wine Research (UK).

Higher Degree Research students under my supervision are exploring topics on wine, trans-imperialism and settler histories.