Under the leadership of Historian and Research Manager Dr Zachary Gorman, the Robert Menzies Institute is spearheading a range of important research into Robert Menzies’s career, beliefs, and legacy, as well as the enduring impact of the Menzies era in shaping modern Australia.

The Institute’s annual academic conference, which takes place in November each year, attracts historians, authors and other leading figures to look at Menzies with fresh eyes. The 2025 conference featured 23 presenters, including Martin Farr, Greg Melleuish, and Alex McDermott, alongside a number of highly talented historians. All exploring ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations’, as the first instalment in our new ‘Forging Australia’ series. The Institute’s next book will be based on the edited papers from this conference and will be released early next year.

The 2026 conference on ‘ANZUS, Menzies and America: The political, strategic, and cultural impact of the USA across Australian history’, is scheduled for 12-13 November and promises to deliver another stellar set of insights into the Menzies era.

Beyond our flagship conferences, we currently have a wide variety of research projects either underway or in development. These cover topics ranging from Menzies’s wartime radio broadcasts, the Menzies’s Government’s landmark investment in democratising university education via Commonwealth Scholarships, a new grassroots history of the founding of the Liberal Party, a poetry anthology, and the conditions for a succesful democracy.