Dr Prudence Flowers

I am a Senior Lecturer in US History interested in histories of conservatism and partisan politics, social movement activism, medicine and public health, and the politics of gender, sexuality, and the body. I am particularly interested in abortion and family planning, both as elements of health care and as triggers for polarising social movement formation. 

I am currently working on several projects, including (i) the US, the Marshall Islands, and nuclear legacies, (iii) abortion politics in 21st century Australia, and (iii) international provision of and access to abortion after 20 weeks' gestation.

My first book, The Right-to-Life Movement, the Reagan Administration, and the Politics of Abortion (Palgrave, 2019) is the first political, ideological, and social history of the US anti-abortion movement in the 1980s. It analysed anti-abortion engagement with the legislative, judicial, and executive branches during the presidency of Republican Ronald Reagan, and offers what is frequently a narrative of disappointment and factionalism. Exploring themes of religion, conservatism, electoral politics, and anti-abortion activism, it argued that the 1980s were a transformative decade for both the right-to-life movement and the Republican Party. 

Between 2018-2020 I was the Catherine Helen Spence scholar. Using this competitive Category 3 funding, I produced an internationally comparative report that combined oral history and archival methods to explore provision of and access to later gestation abortion in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the US. These findings were summarised in Late Termination of Pregnancy, a sole-authored 25,000 word report. 

I have recently published The Reagan Revolution (Routledge, 2025), a monograph that analyses US politics, Ronald Reagan, and the transformation of modern conservatism from the long 1960s to the 2020s. Focusing on major events of the 1980s, this book addresses the neo-liberal turn in economics and governance; culture war conflict over religion, abortion, Supreme Court vacancies, civil rights, drugs, and AIDS; and the final decade of the Cold War. It analyses the gap between Reagan's conservative rhetoric and his often pragmatic, even bipartisan, approach to governing, offering a distinctive exploration of the 1980s as a period of intraparty conflict among Republicans. 

I currently serve as the President of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association and as a national co-convenor of the Australian Women's History Network. I am also the BA Honours coordinator.