Janet Susan McCalman, is an Australian social historian, academic, population researcher and author at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne.
McCalman returned to the University of Melbourne in 1993 on a four-year Australian Research Council Fellowship. Since then she has fulfilled many roles within that university. Firstly she became a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Health and Society. In 2000 she was appointed Reader in the History and Philosophy of Science at the same centre. She was appointed Professor in Public Health in 2003. Her work since 2011 has been at the Centre for Health and Society, in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. McCalman gave the third Sir John Quick Bendigo Lecture in 1996. She spoke on "Towns and Gowns : The Humanities and the Community". La Trobe University established this annual lecture in recognition of Quick's work towards Federation and election as Bendigo's first Federal Member of Parliament. Frank Moorhouse, in his 2004 Griffith Review essay, "Welcome back Bakunin – Life chances in Australia: some notes of discomfort", referred to McCalman's 1993 book, Journeyings as "classic study of privilege". By analysing the individuals in the Australian Who's Who 1998, McCalman showed that private schools dominated, that the "old boys club" prevailed.
Awarded title, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, University of Melbourne, 2016.
Companion of the Order of Australia, 2018 Australia Day Honours, "for eminent service to education, particularly in the field of social history, as a leading academic, researcher and author, as a contributor to multi-disciplinary curriculum development, and through the promotion of history to the wider community."
Publications
Books
Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond 1900–1965, Melbourne University Press, 1984, ; 2nd ed., Hyland House, 1998,
A hundred years at Bank Street: Ascot Vale State School, 1885–1985, with research by Janet Kershaw et al., Ascot Vale State School, 1985,
Who Went Where in Who's Who 1988: The Schooling of the Australian Elite, co-authored with Mark Peel, History Department, University of Melbourne, 1992,
The 1990 Journeyings survey: a statistical portrait of a middle-class generation, co-authored with Mark Peel, History Department, University of Melbourne, 1993,
Journeyings: The Biography of a Middle-Class Generation 1920–1990, Melbourne University Press, 1993,
Solid Bluestone Foundations and Rising Damp : The Fortunes of the Melbourne Middle Class, 1890–1990, History Department, University of Melbourne, 1994,
"The originality of ordinary lives", in Creating Australia : Changing Australian History, edited by Wayne Hudson & Geoffrey Bolton, Allen & Unwin, 1997,
"Well-being in Australian Children", in No Time to Lose : The Wellbeing of Australia's Children, edited by Sue Richardson and Margot Prior, Melbourne University Publishing, 2005,
"Blurred Visions", in Why Universities Matter : A Conversation About Values, Means and Directions, edited by Tony Coady. Allen & Unwin, 2000,
