Dr Benjamin T. Jones is an Australian Research Council DECRA recipient working in the School of History. He has taught history at the Australian National University, University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, and Western Sydney University and held Visiting Fellow posts at Indiana University and Durham University. He has also worked as a historian at the Museum of Australian Democracy. Benjamin has a broad range of research interests including Australian and Canadian colonial histories, republicanism, Australian nationalism, secularism, and pedagogical theory. 

Dr Jones is the author of This Time: Australia's Republican Past and Future (Redback, 2018), Atheism for Christians: Are there lessons for the religious world from the secular tradition? (Wipf & Stock 2016) and Republicanism and Responsible Government: The Shaping of Democracy in Australia and Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press 2014). He is the co-editor of Elections Matter: Ten Federal Elections That Shaped Australia (Monash UP, 2018) and Project Republic: Plans and Arguments for a New Australia (Black Inc 2013). Dr Jones was the lead researcher of the Alternative Australian Flag Survey.  

Dr Jones is an Australian Research Council DECRA recipient working in the School of History. His project is titled Aristotle’s Australia and it traces the republican tradition in Australia from Federation till present day. Even though Australia is not a constitutional republic, this ancient philosophy with roots in classical Athens and Rome has shaped the national story and produced, at times, a stridently communitarian vision of citizenship.

Aristotle’s Australia will explore how civic republican concepts of government and citizenship impacted the development of democratic norms in Australia. Australian democracy is a bricolage of ideas with inspiration drawn from diverse traditions; however, orthodoxy has been established that is heavily reliant on a liberal reading of Australian political development. Without denying the impact of Lockean liberalism, Aristotle’s Australia will investigate the impact of an ancient tradition of virtue and citizenship with roots in classical Athens and Rome. This work will be unique and innovative, offering a perspective of the civic and political bedrock of Australia not readily seen in its historiography.