In this talk, Sita Sargeant is joined by Zoe Smith, Associate Professor Leigh Straw, and Dr Esmé Louise James. Their conversation uncovers stories from Australian history of the women the law went looking for, the women the papers turned into cautionary tales, and the women whose absence from the record is itself the story.

The talk and accompanying resources include discussion prompts that will encourage you to think about your perception of Australian history, how you can find your way into historical research and what the National Library’s collection holds. Consider the voices and stories that may be missing from the collection, or whose stories survive in archives that were never intended to celebrate them. The resources we have provided will build on this discussion and help you to explore your National collection.

Questions to consider:

1. Whose story from your own life, family or community isn’t in any official record but you think should be?
2. Consider the version of Australian history you learnt growing up. Whose absence from this history feels most visible now?
3. What history do you want to go searching for now? How might you go about it?

About Sita Sargeant

Sita Sargeant is a social entrepreneur, author, and one of Australia's leading voices in women's history. In 2021, she founded She Shapes History, a company making women's history accessible and engaging through walking tours, digital content, and partnerships with historic sites and cultural institutions. She Shapes History currently operates in four cities: Canberra, Sydney, Wollongong and Melbourne with plans to be in eight by the end of 2027. She published a book by the same name in 2025 sharing the stories of over 250 women who helped shape 31 towns and cities across Australia. In 2026, she was named the ACT Young Australian of the Year.

About the speakers

Zoe Smith is an award-winning historian whose research sits at the intersections of gender, cultural, social, literary and feminist legal history. Her work excavates the long history of domestic violence in Australia, centring the experiences of victim-survivors and the feminist writers who spoke up alongside them, and drawing attention to the historical lineages of abuse we now name as coercive control, financial abuse, and reproductive coercion. She was the 2024 National Library of Australia Seymour Scholar, a fellowship she spent in the Library's rich archive of feminist writing about domestic violence at the time of Australia's national foundation.

Associate Professor Leigh Straw is an internationally recognised historian, educator and award-winning author who teaches Australian history, crime history and modern American history. Her interest in women and crime began in 2010, when she found stories she knew nothing about buried in the Police Gazettes. She has since written true crime biographies of organised crime figures Kate Leigh and Dulcie Markham, a biography of Australia's first female detective Lillian Armfield, and books on the women of Perth's Roe Street brothels and the sensational ballroom murder case of 1925. She appears regularly on BBC History Extra, ABC Radio National and Conversations.

Dr Esmé Louise James is best known for her Kinky History series, which has gained a following of over 3.5 million people across social platforms. Esmé received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2024, her research exploring the erotic as an aesthetic in eighteenth-century literature. She has written a range of articles for The Age, Vogue and The Conversation, and is the author of the internationally released book Kinky History (2025). She is a three-time AACTA nominee for Best Digital Creator, was named Media Week’s Best Digital Talent in 2024 and received AiMCO’s ‘Influence for Good’ Award in 2026. In 2026, she released SexTistics, a documentary series created alongside her mum, with principal funding from Screen Australia and VIC Screen. Her debut novel, Becoming Venus, is set for release in September this year.