Raffaello Carboni Lecture with Professor Frank Bongiorno AM

Eureka Centre and the Ballarat Italian Association Inc. are proud to announce that Professor Frank Bongiorno AM will deliver the inaugural Raffaello Carboni Lecture. Professor Bongiorno will speak on the topic, ‘Why multiculturalism is good for democracy’, on Tuesday 15 September 2027 at 6pm to mark the International Day of Democracy.

In this lecture, Professor Bongiorno will reflect on the evolution of democracy in Australia and one point of its origins in the Victorian Gold Rush, with reference to Raffaello Carboni and the Eureka Rebellion. He will address cultural diversity in early Victorian democracy, with a focus on First Nations and Chinese engagements with the political system. Drawing on his research and his own family story, he will reflect on the interactions of Italians with Australian democracy, giving special attention to the foundational community of Aeolian Islanders from Sicily and their contributions to Australian civic and political life. He will conclude with reflections on growing societal divisions created by ideological polarisation and its impacts on multiculturalism, social cohesion, and the future of Australia’s democracy.

Professor Frank Bongiorno AM is inaugural Director of the Vice-Chancellor’s Centre for Public History and Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas at the University of Canberra. He was previously Professor of History and Head of the School of History at the Australian National University (ANU). He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University and Emeritus Professor at the ANU. Born in Nhill, Victoria, and raised there and in Melbourne, he is a graduate of the University of Melbourne (1991) and holds a PhD in History from the ANU (1994). In 2019, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for ‘significant service to tertiary education in the field of history’. He is the author of several works of Australian history, including ‘The Sex Lives of Australians: A History’ (2012), ‘The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia’ (2015), and ‘Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia’ (2022). All won ACT Book of the Year, with ‘Dreamers and Schemers’ also winning the Australian Political Studies Association’s Henry Mayer Book Prize. He most recently co-edited ‘Gold Standard?: Remembering the Hawke Government’ (2026) and is a regular contributor to the media.

The Raffaello Carboni Lecture is a partnership event presented by the Eureka Centre and the Ballarat Italian Association Inc.. It honours the life and spirit of the Eureka rebel, Raffaello Carboni, who was born in Urbino, Italy in 1817 and died in Rome in 1875. A linguist, writer, opera composer, librettist and revolutionary, Carboni was a member of the Young Italy movement, which aimed to create a united, independent country from the many fragmented Italian states. After being wounded in the Battle of Rome in 1849, he left Italy for London, where he worked as a translator. By 1854, Carboni was in Ballarat and involved with the miners’ campaign for democratic change. He was one of 13 men sent to trial for treason following the Eureka Stockade. To the government, he was an important arrest, as they tried to portray the diggers’ rebellion as a foreign insurgency. Carboni, who had witnessed the battle, published his first-hand account of these events in 1855 as ‘The Eureka Stockade’ — a vital historical record of Eureka.

A partnership event presented by the Eureka Centre and the Ballarat Italian Association Inc.

Image: Professor Frank Bongiorno AM by Adam Spence