Woman Jalland, Patricia (Pat) (1941 - )

Born
18 August 1941
Manchester, England
Occupation
Historian
Alternative Names
  • Case, Patricia (Maiden)

Written by Sharon M. Harrison, The University of Melbourne with Patricia Jalland

Pat Jalland is a leading historian of the social history of modern Britain and Australia, who has contributed to the social history of old age in Australia, social, cultural and medical history of death, grief and mourning, and history of women and the family in Britain and Australia in significant ways. She was born Patricia Case on 18 August 1941 in Manchester England, the elder daughter of Esther Case and George Hoffman Case, a mechanical engineer. She attended the Victoria Avenue Junior School and at age eleven won a scholarship to Manchester High School (1952-1959). In 1963 she graduated with a BA (Hons) from Bristol University and earned a Graduate Education Certificate from Kings College, London in 1964. From 1965-1967 she taught history at Luton College of Technology, UK, and Malvern Collegiate Institute, Toronto, Canada.

Jalland was awarded an MA from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1969. From 1969 to 1971, while undertaking doctoral studies, Jalland worked as Teaching Assistant, History Department, University of Toronto. From 1973 to 1976 Jalland held a Research Fellowship at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University. She was also a Special Lecturer in History at University College London (1974-1975) and Tutor at the London School of Economics (1975-1976). She was awarded her PhD from the University of Toronto in 1976 for her thesis The Irish question in liberal politics, 1911-14. In 1976 Jalland moved to Western Australia, where she was appointed Senior Lecturer in History at Curtin University (1976-1983) and later Associate Professor in history at Murdoch University (1986-1996). Jalland held appointments as Senior Research Fellow in History, Research School of Social Sciences, the Australian National University (1983-1985, 1991-1992), where she has been Professor of history since 1997. She has been Head of Department at Curtin and Murdoch Universities and at the Australian National University.

Jalland has published in medieval history, Anglo-Irish political history, British women's history, and the history of death and bereavement. Her nine books include four on the history of death and loss in England and Australia from 1840 to the present. She was awarded the NSW Premier's Prize for History in 1997 for Death in the Victorian Family (1996, pb edn 1998). Her book Changing ways of death in twentieth-century Australia: war, medicine, and the funeral business (2006) was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Prize. Other publications include: The liberals and Ireland: the Ulster question in British politics to 1914 (1980); Women from birth to death: the female life cycle in Britain 1830-1914 (1986); Women, marriage, and politics, 1860-1914 (1986), for which Jalland received the WA Literary Awards Non-Fiction Prize in 1987; and The Liberals and Ireland (1993); Australian ways of death: a social and cultural history 1840-1918 (2002); and Death in war and peace: loss and grief in England, 1914-1970 (2010). Jalland is the editor of Octavia Wilberforce: the autobiography of a pioneer woman doctor (1989). She has recently completed a book on the history of old age in Australia.

Jalland was the first female historian elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in 1988, and served as a member of the Academy's Executive Committee from 1992-1999. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London, in 1981.

Additional sources: Personal communication between Sharon M. Harrison and Patricia Jalland, July 2013.

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