McCalman was born and raised in Nyasaland (current-day Malawi) before moving to Australia to complete his university degrees in History.
[10] Subsequently, in 2007, McCalman was made an Officer of the Order of Australia as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for “for service to history and to the humanities as a teacher, researcher and author, and through administrative, advocacy and advisory roles in academic and public sector organisations”.
[11] Early in his career, McCalman wrote extensively on his specialist field: the cultural history of Nineteenth and eighteenth century Britain and Europe.
[13] Some reviews of the book note McCalman’s ability to “shift … [the] angle of vision” of academic research in the over-saturated field of popular radicalism during this period of history.
[14] Similarly, a review of the same book by Professor Anne Humphreys from the City University of New York praises McCalman’s skills as a researcher, noting that he “has done much first-rate detective work” on the topic, but criticises him for “problematic” and contradicting interpretations of his sources.
[19] During the early 2000s, McCalman’s research interests pivoted from European and British cultural history to historiography and the value of historical re-enactments in the study of the past.
[20] McCalman reflected on this experience in a 2003 memoir and article for the journal Meanjin, comparing his difficult journey to George Orwell’s 1984: “Big Brother demands a maximum of discomfort, danger and humiliation”.
Focusing, in particular, on the scientific voyages by the likes of Charles Darwin, Matthew Flinders and James Cook, McCalman discusses in his works the exploration of the Pacific and Oceanic regions.
[27] The majority of the book, thus, is dedicated to “demonstrating how research derived from a humanities perspectives can transform our understandings of the character and implications of invasion ecologies”.
To promote this book, McCalman was interviewed by Phillip Adams on the ABC Radio National programme Late Night Live during July 2003.
[31] In a review by the Sydney Morning Herald, the book was described as “neither a fully-fledged biography nor a thorough cultural history, but a little of both … It provides an admirable introduction to one of the most curious facets of the eighteenth-century”.
As George Roff writes in his review: “McCalman has produced a fascinating book that is open to both scientists and general readers: almost anyone with a sense of curiosity about natural history will be intrigued by this work".
[34] To promote the book, McCalman was a guest on the ABC Podcast series Conversations, hosted by Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski, in 2015.
[35] In a report from the Australian Academy of the Humanities, titled “the Power of the Humanities”, the book lead to John Büsst, a resident of Mission Beach which suffered damage from a cycle, approaching McCalman who helped “[secure] state heritage listing for Büsst’s home … It is destined to become a centre for artists, and for reef and rainforest environmental research”.