Associate Professor Julie McIntyre

Australia's wine industry is significant to the nation's economy and culture. The production of grape wine is the result of modern globalisation and the formation of British colonies in Country managed for millennia by First peoples. In turn, the wine industry has connected the colonies and nation of Australia to other parts of the world, such as in the movement of people, the transfer of hopes and know-how, and changes to other-than-human nature required to produce wine. 

Questions that are central to my inquiries include: how has the Hunter Valley wine producing community achieved continuity despite the region's environmental unsuitability for winegrape growing? What is the value of this commodity producing community to Hunter Valley participants? What does the commodification of the introduced species for winegrapes (Vitis vinifera) mean for Australia's First Nations and landscapes? These questions are answered in my publications, listed here.

As a member of the editorial team of Settler Colonial Studies I foster publication of research and book review essays focused on histories of 'replacing' Indigenous populations, at a time when the journal seeks to better understand Indigenous views of settler colonialism and the role of First peoples in making modern nations.

My two books published by UNSW Press/NewSouth (2012, 2018) have each won industry prizes and were finalists in the New South Wales Premier's History Awards in Sydney. Hunter Wine: A history received an International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) Jury Prize "Special Mention for History" in Paris. My research is published in key journals and is widely cited in health, economics and business, as well as history. 

I have held the Rydon Fellowship at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies (now Menzies Australia Institute) King’s College London (2010), an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant (2014-2018 - Chief Investigator 2), the State Library of NSW Merewether Fellowship (2018), a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award at the University of California, Davis (2019), a University of Newcastle Women in Research Fellowship (2022), a position in the Inaugural Australian Fulbright Alumni Association Leadership Program (2022), and am a Research Associate of the National Museum of Australia (2021-2025).

In 2023 I was a funded Visiting Scholar at University of British Columbia (BC, Canada), hosted by the Culinaria Research Institute, University of Toronto (ON, Canada) and returned for research by invitation to my Fulbright host institution, the Shields Library Special Collections at the University of California, Davis.

I am completing a new global history of Australia for Princeton University Press, contracted for delivery in 2025-26.

I co-founded and direct the University of Newcastle's international Wine Studies Research Network, I serve as Secretary on the History Council of NSW (2021-2025) and on the steering committee of the Australian Aotearoa NZ Environmental History Network (since 2017). I previously directed the University of Newcastle's Centre for 21st Century Humanities and am a member of the University of Newcastle's Purai Global Indigenous Histories Centre.

Higher degree research students under my supervision have researched French-Australian transfers in winegrowing and are engaged in projects on the wine industry and climate change, settler citrus-growing in South Australia, Worimi history of place, convict history in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley, and comparative iconographies of race and gender in India and Australia. 

Undergraduate courses I convene are:

HASS2000 Bachelor of Arts (BA) Practice (Research Skills in the Humanities)

HIST2211 Things that Made the Modern World (from 2024)

HIST3221 Food and Drinks in Global History (from 2023)

HIST3621 Maps and Dreams: Aboriginal-Colonial Relationships in Australian History (until 2023)

HIST3655 Taste and Place: The Provenance of Food and Drinks (in development)