This gives you a fairly good idea of my hand-eye coordination.
Me taking a screamer.
Writing and speaking
On Sport
In 2019, I gave a presentation on the French Vichy government’s ban on rugby league for the one-day symposium Rugby League Reflections, organised by the Tom Brock Bequest people, an organisation attached to the Australian Association for Sports History.
A paper based on the presentation, “Unlucky 13: Amateurism as a weapon of war in Vichy France” was published in Sporting Traditions, vol. 38, no. 1 (May 2021), pp. 117-133).
It was also the subject of an interview by Tony Collins on his Rugby Reloaded pocast: Rugby Reloaded: Vichy, amateurism and the banning of rugby league in France
I have an academic article on the philosophy of sport published in a special issue of Deleuze and Guattari Studies (10.2, 2016): The Other Industrial Art: Deleuze, Cinema, Affect and Sport
I have maintained a sporadic cricket blog since 2009: Batsy. It’s mostly personal reflections on the game as it happens, mostly lighter, some heavier.
My most recent post was on the departure of Justin Langer as coach of the Australian cricket team: The Man Who Loved Cricket
Others I have received positive feedback on:
- On Steve Smith’s concussion at Lords: Steve Smith Feels Great, or the Follies of Lords
- On Steve Smith and the sandpaper: Sentimental Education
- On the death of Peter Roebuck: Peter, Peter, Peter
I was moved by the reactions to the Michael Wilson photo of Kayla Harris to write a Roar article on how Pierre de Coubertin felt about female athletes: Faster, Stronger, Higher: Kayla Harris and the Olympic Ideal
On Translation
Magazine articles in In Touch, the magazine of the Australian Institute for Interpreters and Translators:
- ‘Paper Weight, or A Very Civil Romance’
- ‘Who has the final word? Literary theory, translation theory, and practice’
- ‘It’s not all about the money’ – on the concept of the ‘liberal professional’
Industry presentation on ‘Machine Translation from a Professional Angle’ for a Multilingual Health Information Stakeholders Forum organised by the NSW government’s Multicultural Health Communication service:
On Food
I have an extremely sparse food blog, Batsy Food, but I was recently moved to write a longer piece on the late, great Margaret Fulton:
melissa-mcmahon.com 