Purpose This paper aims to describe the development, promotion and evaluation of sustainability learning experience database (SLED), a university-curated database of sustainability experiences to augment formal student learning. Its purpose was to encourage students to participate in experiential learning, to facilitate students’ critical appraisal of programs ostensibly designed to create sustainability and to, thus, develop students’ sustainability self-efficacy and employability. Design/methodology/approach In total, 55 sustainability experiences were curated and placed into the SLED database, which was promoted to students in nine subjects. Supporting materials designed to assist critical evaluation, reflection on experiences and to build student employability were also developed. A comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation of the program was conducted. Findings The quantitative evaluation revealed some changes in environmental behaviors, depth of critical sustainability thinking and graduate attributes. The qualitative evaluation revealed that students see the value of a university-curated database of experiences and provided ideas for improvements to the database. It also revealed examples of higher-order learning facilitated by SLED. Research limitations/implications Recruitment and attrition of research subjects, common challenges in pedagogical research, were experienced. “Opt-out” is one response to this but it comes with ethical challenges. Originality/value This exploratory study demonstrates the potential of SLED to build students’ sustainability efficacy and suggests ways in which it and similar programs can be developed for improved student and sustainability outcomes. Namely, the use of an online platform closely associated with existing learning management systems, higher-level institutional stewardship, closer curriculum integration and close partnering with credentialing programs.

This paper describes the multidisciplinary project Founders and Survivors: Australian Life Courses in Historical Context. Individual life courses, families and generations through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are being reconstituted from a wide range of data including convict records; birth, death and marriage registrations; and World War I service records. The project will result in a longitudinal study of Australian settlement, the long-run effects of forced labour and emigration on health and survival, family formation, intergenerational morbidity and mortality, and social and geographic mobility. Crown

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Hydropathy and its Historians During the 1820s Vincent Priessnitz established Grafenberg' as the first centre for hydropathy, his novel modification ofwater-based therapies. As word ofthe seemingly miraculous cure spread, spiralling numbers of patients journeyed from across Europe, and further afield, to place themselves under Priessnitz's care.2 It was not, however, until the early 1840s that hydropathy impinged upon the consciousness of Britain's medical practitioners and valetudinarians. While short reviews describing the new therapy appeared in the medical press in 1841,3 it was Captain Claridge who was responsible for mobilizing British interest in the water cure. In 1842 he published an account of his experiences as a patient of Priessnitz, and followed this with a tireless lecture tour around the British Isles.4 His descriptions of hydropathy appealed to a public whose ardour remained undimmed for any therapy that promised relief from disease. The bulk of the medical practitioners were less convinced. Some reacted

Between 1822 and the late 1830s a highly personal priority dispute was fought between the celebrated surgeon and anatomist Sir Charles Bell and his ex-student Herbert Mayo. The dispute was over the motor and sensory functions of the Vth and VIIth cranial nerves. Over the course of the 1820s and the 1830s, the competing claims of Bell and Mayo were presented in newspapers, journals, and textbooks. But by the time of Bell's death in 1842, Mayo had been discredited, a seemingly tragic footnote in the history of nervous discovery. And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, Bell's case was at best disingenuous. His success was not due to any intrinsic scientific merit in his argument, but rather his ability to create a narrative that undermined the credibility of Mayo. However, only when Mayo's public performances elided with Bell's descriptions did this ploy succeed. As a result, the dispute illuminates the importance of credibility to the creation of an idealised scientific medical practitioner.