Dr Tristan Moss

Dr Tristan Moss

Senior Lecturer
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities & Social Sciences

Dr Tristan Moss is a senior lecturer in history at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He is a historian researching Australian space history and the history of the Australian Defence Force and is currently writing a history of Australian space activities, 1957 – to the present. He is the author of Guarding the Periphery: The Australian Army in Papua New Guinea, 1951–75 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and co-editor of Beyond Combat: Australian military activity away from the battlefields (NewSouth Books, 2018) and Fighting Australia’s Cold War: the Nexus of Strategy and Operations in a Multipolar Asia, 1945–1965 (Australian National University Press).

Tristan has previously worked at Australian Command and Staff College, on the Official History of Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations, and on the Official History of Australian operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and East Timor at the Australian War Memorial. Tristan is the winner of a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, titled 'Australia and Space: Government policy and public imagination, 1957 – 2021’.  Tristan is also a Fulbright Senior Scholar, (Fulbright Professional Scholarship in Australian-U.S. Alliance Studies) and a Chief Investigator on the Discovery Project 'A Century of Sex and the Australian Military, 1914 - 2020'.

  • Books | 2017
    Moss TE, 2017, Guarding the Periphery: The Australian Army in Papua New Guinea, Australian Army History Series, CUP, Cambridge, U.K.
  • Book Chapters | 2023
    Moss T, 2023, 'History and Australia's Space Policy', in The Foundations of Australia's Space Policy, Griffith Asia Institute, Brisbane, pp. 5 - 13
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Moss T, 2021, 'Defending Australia’s land border: the Australian military in Papua New Guinea', in Fighting Australia’s Cold War: The nexus of strategy and operations in a multipolar Asia, 1945 – 1965, pp. 157 - 172, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n9414/pdf/ch08.pdf
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Moss T, 2021, 'Planning for war in Southeast Asia: the Far East Strategic Reserve, 1955 - 66', in Moss T; Dean P (ed.), Fighting Australia’s Cold War: The nexus of strategy and operations in a multipolar Asia, 1945 – 1965, pp. 95 - 114, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n9414/pdf/ch05.pdf
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Moss T; Hearder R, 2019, 'Australian Peacekeepers and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder', in Bou J; Breen B; Horner D; Pratten G (ed.), The Limits of Peacekeeping: Australian peacekeeping in internal conflicts, 1993 – 2005, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 578 - 606
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Beaumont J; Moss T, 2018, 'Australian military forces in the Second World War', in Beaumont J; Cadzow A (ed.), Serving Our Country: Indigenous Australians, war, defence and citizenship, NewSouth, Sydney, pp. 135 - 154
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Dean P; Moss T, 2018, 'War and Society in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania', in Ulbrich D; Muehlbauer M (ed.), The Routledge History of Global War and History, Routledge, pp. 32 - 44, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315725192
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Moss T; Richardson T, 2018, 'History and the military’s other tasks', in Moss T; Richardson T (ed.), Beyond Combat: the Australian military experience off the battlefield, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 1 - 9, https://www.booktopia.com.au/beyond-combat-tristan-moss/prod9781742235905.html
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Moss T, 2018, 'Chalkies and civics: teaching the military in Papua New Guinea, 1966 – 1972', in Moss T; Richardson T (ed.), Beyond Combat: Australian military activity away from the battlefield, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, pp. 60 - 71
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Moss T, 2017, 'Postwar Planner: Lieutenant General Sir Mervyn Brogan, 1915 – 1994', in Shadow Men: the forgotten legacies that shaped the Australian Army from the Veldt to Vietnam, NewSouth, Sydney, pp. 211 - 211
    Book Chapters | 2016
    Moss TE; Fitzpatrick G, 2016, 'Crimes against Captured Airmen', in Australia's War Crimes Trials 1945-51, BRILL
  • Edited Books | 2023
    Moss T, (ed.), 2023, The Foundations of Australia's Space Policy, Griffith Asia Institute, Brisbane, https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/1728617/The-foundations-of-Australias-space-policy-web.pdf
    Edited Books | 2021
    Moss T; Dean P, (ed.), 2021, Fighting Australia’s Cold War: The nexus of strategy and operations in a multipolar Asia, 1945 – 1965, ANU Press, Canberra, https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/fighting-australias-cold-war
    Edited Books | 2018
    Moss T; Richardson T, (ed.), 2018, Beyond Combat: the Australian military experience off the battlefields, UNSW Press, Sydney
  • Journal articles | 2022
    Moss T, 2022, '‘Fuzzy Wuzzy’ soldiers: Race and Papua New Guinean soldiers in the Australian Army, 1940–60', War in History, 29, pp. 467 - 485, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09683445211000375
    Journal articles | 2020
    Moss T, 2020, 'Brogan, Sir Mervyn Francis (1915–1994)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/brogan-sir-mervyn-francis-28329
    Journal articles | 2020
    Moss T, 2020, '‘There Are Many Other Things More Important to Us Than Space Research’: The Australian Government and the Dawn of the Space Age, 1956–62', Australian Historical Studies, 51, pp. 442 - 458, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1031461x.2020.1766522
    Journal articles | 2018
    Moss T, 2018, '‘Talking Itself Out of a Political Future’: Education and Australian Army Engagement with Papua New Guinean Independence, 1966–72', The Journal of Pacific History, pp. 1 - 17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2018.1548268
  • Working Papers | 2021
    Moss T, 2021, Unifying Space: Australia Needs a Whole of Government Space Policy, UWA Defence and Security Institute, http://dx.doi.org, https://defenceuwa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Black-Swan-Strategy-Paper-Issue02_Unifying-Space.pdf
  • Reports | 2023
    Moss T; Robison Hasani K; Deejay A, 2023, Looking Up from Down Under: Australian attitudes to national space activities, Australian Centre for Space Governance, https://www.spacegovcentre.org/_files/ugd/ff2a5a_76d6c587c5444703acc72faffa81c492.pdf
    Reports | 2023
    Moss T, 2023, The space between alliance and self-reliance: The evolution of the Australia-US defence space relationship, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney, https://www.ussc.edu.au/the-evolution-of-the-australia-us-defence-space-relationship
    Other | 2021
    Moss T, 2021, It’s not rocket science, Australia needs a stronger space strategy’, Lowy Interpreter, , https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/it-s-not-rocket-science-australia-needs-stronger-space-strategy
    Other | 2014
    Moss T, 2014, Defending Whose Country? Indigenous soldiers in the Pacific War, Informa UK Limited, , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2014.950850