Steven Loveridge

Dr Steven Loveridge

B.A. (Hons) M.A. University of Waikato, Ph.D. Victoria University of Wellington

Research

Much of Steven’s research has focused upon the history of the First World War in New Zealand.  Besides various articles and chapters investigating diverse social and cultural aspects of the War, he has authored, co-authored and edited some major books on the subject.

His first book – Calls to Arms: New Zealand Society and Commitment to the Great War – is a study of cultural mobilisation and the ways in which contemporaries presented and understood the war.  In 2015 he launched and headed a project to produce an anthology – New Zealand Society at War, 1914-1918 – collecting authoritative chapters written by expert scholars on disparate aspects of New Zealand society during the conflict.  During the centenary of the War, he was commissioned to co-author an official history volume.  The resultant work – The Home Front – covered New Zealand’s social, political, economic and diplomatic experiences.  He is currently amassing material for a book studying the remarkable transformations in public conceptions of the War since 1918.

His research has also branched into matters of governance, diplomacy and security intelligence. Since 2015 he has worked with Professor Richard Hill on a project, supported by the Royal Society Marsden Fund, to study the history of security intelligence and state surveillance in New Zealand.  The first volume of this history – Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand, 1900-1956 – was launched in 2023 and was co-authored by Steven and Professor Hill.  The second co-authored volume, which will cover the remainder of the twentieth century, is currently being written.  He is the editor of the Surveillance and Security History Series, an online journal associated with the project and hosted by the Stout Research Centre, which features original research.

In 2019 he was commissioned to research and write material for the official history, New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History. His chapter investigated the major challenges diplomats and officials navigated over 1967-1989.  Since 2021 he has been involved in the Wai 2500 Military Veterans Inquiry and has been responsible for several research reports investigating policies and practices related to the service of Maori personnel during World War One, the Korean War and deployments in Southeast Asia.

Steven is a regular book reviewer for scholarship within his fields of expertise, has presented his research at numerous conferences and events and has acted as a historical consultant for various media productions.

Publications

Books

(co-authored with Richard S Hill), Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand, 1900-1956 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2023)

(co-authored with James Watson), The Home Front: New Zealand Society and The War Effort, 1914-19 (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2019)

(editor and author of multiple chapters), New Zealand Society at War, 1914-1918 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016)

Calls to Arms: New Zealand Society and Commitment to the Great War (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2014)

Chapters and Articles

‘“American cousins”, “Brown Britons”, “un-British Yanks” and “Savage Asiatics”: New Zealand Conceptions of American and Japanese Power Towards and Through the Pacific War’, Peter Cooke and John Crawford (eds), Heavy and Continuous Sacrifice: New Zealand, Her Allies and the Second World War – forthcoming from Roger Steele publishing

‘Behind the Golden Weather: The Right-ward Fringe in New Zealand, 1950-1970’, Matthew Cunningham, Marinus La Rooij and Paul Spoonley (eds), Histories of Hate: The Radical Right in Aotearoa New Zealand (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2022), pp.179-201

‘Meeting New Challenges, 1965-1988’, Ian McGibbon (ed), New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History, (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2022), pp.217-257

‘“They’ll go like British Shells!”: A Historical Perspective on Commercial Anzackery in New Zealand’, Journal of New Zealand Studies, No.32 (2021), pp.134-152

‘What should Daddy do in the Great War?: The Second Division Question and Conditional Commitment within New Zealand’s War Effort, 1917-1918’, Journal of New Zealand Studies, No.27 (2018), pp.16-34

‘Another Great War?: New Zealand Interpretations of the First World War towards and into the Second World War’, First World War Studies, Vol.7, Issue 3 (2017), pp.303-325

‘Sketching New Zealand’s War: William Blomfield and the New Zealand Observer’, James Watson, John Crawford and David Littlewood (eds), Experience of a Lifetime: People, Personalities and Leaders in the First World War (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2016), pp.249-267

‘The “Other” on the Other Side of the Ditch?: The Conception of New Zealand’s Disassociation with Australia’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol.44, No.1 (2016), pp.70-94

‘Discerning “the Fascist Creed”: Counter-subversion and Fascistic Activity in New Zealand, 1950s-1960s’, Security and Surveillance History Series, 2 (2015), pp.1-18

‘Historiography 1918-today (New Zealand)’ for 1914-1918-Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War (2015)

‘Seeing Trauma as Sacrifice: The Link Between “Sentimental Equipment” and Endurance in New Zealand’s War Effort’, David Monger, Sarah Murray and Katie Pickles (eds), Endurance and the First World War: Experience and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), pp.49-63

‘Not Quiet on the Tasman Front?: The Trans-Tasman Rivalry in New Zealand’s Great War Cartoons’, European Journal of Humour Research, Vol.2, No.4 (2014), pp.108-125

‘Not so Quiet on the New Zealand Front: All Quiet on the Western Front and New Zealand Memories of the Great War’, Journal of New Zealand Studies, No.18(2014), pp.23-40

‘A German is Always a German?: Representations of Enemies, Germans and Race in New Zealand c. 1890-1918’, New Zealand Journal of History, Vol.48, No.1 (April 2014), pp.51-77

‘“Soldiers and Shirkers”: Modernity and New Zealand Masculinity During the Great War’, New Zealand Journal of History, Vol.47, No.1 (April 2013), pp.59-79