This 'history of History' provides a series of perspectives on a major academic discipline at the University of Adelaide, from colonial times to the present. Essays by current and former academics and students explore the distinctive character of Adelaide's History Department. They highlight changing fashions and fortunes in modes of research, teaching and governance, and the numerous ways in which the university's historians interacted with civic, state, national and international communities. Besides surveying the remarkable transformations of the History Office, Pasts Present includes a series of specially commissioned memoirs and reminiscences by History students from the 1940s to the 1980s, including former State Deputy Premier Don Hopgood and Federal Minister Amanda Vanstone. A reflective essay by Vesna Drapac, the first female Head of History, rounds out this lively portrait of a remarkably diverse, innovative and influential educational enterprise.