Celebrations are pervasive. At a personal level they include birthdays, funerals, weddings, get-togethers, award ceremonies, and parties organised for any number of reasons. At a community level they include faith-based services, public holidays, commemorations and community festivals. These are just a selection. I argue that there is a need to better understand what role celebrations can play to improve health and wellbeing and not just for individuals but for communities. In this thesis I examine the experiences, context, processes and politics of celebrations and how they contribute to both personal and collective health and wellbeing. Of course, some celebrations make a more meaningful contribution than others. And it is the nature of that difference I seek to understand. The two leading research questions I address are: • How do celebrations contribute to personal and collective health and wellbeing? • What is ‘healthy’ celebration practice? There are three sections in this thesis. In the first I describe and discuss the Australian context of celebration activities. I also explore definitions of celebrations. I consider celebrations to be an active process made up of both play and ritual. Celebrations seek to focus people’s attention, and intention, in a positive way. The resulting celebratory act(s) are a cultural expression of what a particular individual or community values. There are a diversity of celebration forms and practices - open, spontaneous, planned and formal. Each celebration is influenced by, and influences, the context in which it occurs. I will be focusing on celebrations occurring within a community context. A community may be a family, an organization, local community, shared interest group or a whole of society grouping. In the second section of the thesis I analyse the relationship of celebrations to various dimensions of health and wellbeing. These dimensions include: social connectedness, identity, transitions and lifespan development, and community capacity. A major part of my fieldwork was undertaken in Victoria where I studied 20 community celebrations. The community celebrations I examined in varying degrees, did positively contribute to personal and collective wellbeing. They did so because they included positive and personally meaningful activities. They explored identity. Celebrations played a role in supporting transitions leading to ongoing healthy development. They provided opportunities for learning; not just knowledge but allowed values to be explored and skills and resources to be gained. They brought people together to interact and fostered a sense of belonging. Celebrations that were health enhancing valued diversity but also explored what unites people. My research confirmed that celebrations can foster our connections; to ourselves, others, the earth, time and the spiritual. They can build relationships between individuals, groups and organizations. They can be spaces that allow for personal and collective healing. But the degree to which these positive dimensions can be achieved depends on the nature or quality of the celebration practice. And it is the practice of planning and facilitating celebrations that is the focus of the third section of the thesis. Some celebration practices are health enhancing while others are not. Celebrations can be an opportunity to explore not just ourselves but our communities and how they oppress particular individuals and groups. Many contemporary celebrations do not feel authentic or resonate with people. They often remain at the surface and focus on passive forms of entertainment and the consumption of goods. Deeper engagement can be facilitated through more participatory and creative activities such as dance, playing music, story -making and -telling and ritual; particularly when engaged in with conscious intention. Celebrations at the individual level can be a positive, affirming experience that is personally meaningful and enables people to move towards their potential. At a collective level they build relationships between the individual, groups and places. They highlight the interconnectedness between all things. And as such they are an integral part of community life. I conclude by presenting an analytical framework to help understand the nature of celebration practice that is less or more likely to facilitate health and wellbeing. I try to adopt the viewpoint of a practitioner interested in the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities. I anticipate this knowledge will stimulate discussion particularly within the health and community sector about how celebration practice can be integrated into the work of health professionals and community workers.

Celebrations are pervasive. At a personal level they include birthdays, funerals, weddings, get-togethers, award ceremonies, and parties organised for any number of reasons. At a community level they include faith-based services, public holidays, commemorations and community festivals. These are just a selection. I argue that there is a need to better understand what role celebrations can play to improve health and wellbeing and not just for individuals but for communities. In this thesis I examine the experiences, context, processes and politics of celebrations and how they contribute to both personal and collective health and wellbeing. Of course, some celebrations make a more meaningful contribution than others. And it is the nature of that difference I seek to understand. The two leading research questions I address are: • How do celebrations contribute to personal and collective health and wellbeing? • What is ‘healthy’ celebration practice? There are three sections in this thesis. In the first I describe and discuss the Australian context of celebration activities. I also explore definitions of celebrations. I consider celebrations to be an active process made up of both play and ritual. Celebrations seek to focus people’s attention, and intention, in a positive way. The resulting celebratory act(s) are a cultural expression of what a particular individual or community values. There are a diversity of celebration forms and practices - open, spontaneous, planned and formal. Each celebration is influenced by, and influences, the context in which it occurs. I will be focusing on celebrations occurring within a community context. A community may be a family, an organization, local community, shared interest group or a whole of society grouping. In the second section of the thesis I analyse the relationship of celebrations to various dimensions of health and wellbeing. These dimensions include: social connectedness, identity, transitions and lifespan development, and community capacity. A major part of my fieldwork was undertaken in Victoria where I studied 20 community celebrations. The community celebrations I examined in varying degrees, did positively contribute to personal and collective wellbeing. They did so because they included positive and personally meaningful activities. They explored identity. Celebrations played a role in supporting transitions leading to ongoing healthy development. They provided opportunities for learning; not just knowledge but allowed values to be explored and skills and resources to be gained. They brought people together to interact and fostered a sense of belonging. Celebrations that were health enhancing valued diversity but also explored what unites people. My research confirmed that celebrations can foster our connections; to ourselves, others, the earth, time and the spiritual. They can build relationships between individuals, groups and organizations. They can be spaces that allow for personal and collective healing. But the degree to which these positive dimensions can be achieved depends on the nature or quality of the celebration practice. And it is the practice of planning and facilitating celebrations that is the focus of the third section of the thesis. Some celebration practices are health enhancing while others are not. Celebrations can be an opportunity to explore not just ourselves but our communities and how they oppress particular individuals and groups. Many contemporary celebrations do not feel authentic or resonate with people. They often remain at the surface and focus on passive forms of entertainment and the consumption of goods. Deeper engagement can be facilitated through more participatory and creative activities such as dance, playing music, story -making and -telling and ritual; particularly when engaged in with conscious intention. Celebrations at the individual level can be a positive, affirming experience that is personally meaningful and enables people to move towards their potential. At a collective level they build relationships between the individual, groups and places. They highlight the interconnectedness between all things. And as such they are an integral part of community life. I conclude by presenting an analytical framework to help understand the nature of celebration practice that is less or more likely to facilitate health and wellbeing. I try to adopt the viewpoint of a practitioner interested in the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities. I anticipate this knowledge will stimulate discussion particularly within the health and community sector about how celebration practice can be integrated into the work of health professionals and community workers.

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This thesis examines Protestant unionist commemorations of the Battle of the Somme in Northern Ireland during a phase in which they exhibited marked popularity and politicization. Filling a gap in the scholarship and building upon it, this thesis pays closer attention to the historical context and development of these commemorations and takes into account a broader swath of forms and locations of commemoration. It argues that, in the face of the perceived threat of Irish unification posed by the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, unionists employed the memory of the Somme as a political tool on two different but overlapping fronts. On one front, they used it against their collective opponents, who supported or supposedly supported Irish unification. On a second front, conflicting groups within the unionist community, namely unionist politicians, Orangemen, Protestant youths, and loyalist paramilitaries, interpreted the Somme differently to satisfy their partisan agendas. Analyzing Somme commemoration at the Belfast cenotaph, in parades, and in murals, this thesis provides explanations for why the Somme was remembered differently in various mediums and locales of commemoration, with particular attention to the differing degrees and manners in which Protestant commemorators recognized the Catholic contribution in the Somme campaign. / Department of History

This study examines the changing perceptions of Anzac Day in New Zealand, Australia and Turkey in the twentieth century. Changing interpretations of Anzac Day reflect social and political changes in the nations over that time. Anzac Day is an annual commemoration which has profound significance in the Australian and New Zealand social landscape. It has undergone significant changes of meaning since it began, and may be regarded as being an example of the changeable script of memory. The thesis argues that memory and landscape intersect to influence the way commemorative gestures are interpreted. Personal and community memories are fluid, influenced by the current historical landscape. This means that each successive Anzac Day can have different connotations. The public perception of these connotations is traced for each of New Zealand, Australia and Turkey. Anzac Day reflects the forces at work in the current historical landscape. Within that landscape it has different meanings and also functions as an arena for individual and community agency. On Anzac Day there are parades and services which constitute a public theatre where communities validate military service. Individual and communal feats are held high and an ethic or myth is placed as a model within the social fabric. Anzac Day is contested and reflects tides of opinion about war and society and the role of women. It is also the locale of quiet, personal contemplation, where central family attachments to the loved and lost and the debt owed by civilian communities to the military are expressed. Generational change has redefined its meanings and functions. Anzac Day was shaped in a contemporary historical landscape. It reflected multi-national perspectives within British Empire and Commonwealth countries and Turkey. For Turkey the day represented a developing friendship with former foes and was couched within Onsekiz Mart Zaferi, a celebration of the Çanakkale Savaşlari 1915 victory in the Dardanelles campaign. As Anzac Day evolved, Turkey, the host country for New Zealand and Australian pilgrims, became the focus of world attention on the day. Gallipoli is now universally recognised as the international shrine for Anzac Day.

This thesis is a musical reconstruction of the primary services held on 13 August 1837, for the fiftieth anniversary of the dedication of the Moravian church at Lititz, Pennsylvania. The work includes general background on the Moravians and interprets information from contemporary sources to place the music in its accurate historical context. The edition of music comprises more than one half of the paper, and is taken from the original manuscript scores used. Included in the edition are five concerted anthems for choir and orchestra, and eighteen hymns from eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Moravian tunebooks. The special texts come from an original set of orders of service.

This thesis will study three specific subjects in order to document changing viewpoints in American culture in relation to nationalism, patriotism, and memories from older generations. It will be studying a space- Bunker Hill, a place- Independence Hall and a person- Marquis Lafayette at approximately fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Each subject will explore the ways the memory of the soldiers involved in the American Revolution have been preserved and remembered. It is the intent of this thesis to establish the importance of the passage of time especially when it comes to preserving historic artifacts and buildings and the way the changing associations have on how we preserve these artifacts. / The triumphal tour of Marquis Lafayette -- Independence Hall -- Bunker Hill Monument. / Department of Architecture

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