Ros Pesman

Previous Challis Chairs of History had been George Arnold Wood, Stephen Roberts, John Manning Ward and Deryck Schreuder.

[5] A scholar of the social and political elites of Renaissance Florence, Pesman published a number of works in this field.

However, family, teaching and administrative duties limited her capacity to undertake sustained research in Italian archives and she devoted more time to projects within Australia, leading research in fields such as Italian migration to Australia[3] and Australian travel and tourism.

She was appointed a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2002,[6] later serving as its vice-president from 2005–06, served as president of the Australian Historical Association from 2004–06 and in 2010 she was awarded the History Council of New South Wales Annual History Citation for services to the discipline.

[4] In 1999 she was appointed pro vice-chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, one of the then three main faculty groupings at the university.