Australian Centre Fellows

Mr Hugh Anderson
Hugh Anderson is a widely published writer in fields as diverse as history, literary criticism, school texts and biography, and has also made significant contributions to the study of Australian folklore, most particularly in the field of folksong. For his work in Australian history, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in 1974. Since 1954, beginning with the Black Bull Chapbooks series published by Rams Skull Press, Anderson has written, edited and co-edited works central to folklore studies in this country. These works include: Colonial Ballads, The Story of Australian Folksong, The Goldrush Songster, Farewell to Old England: A Broadside History of Early Australia, Folk Songs of Australia, George Loyau, The Man Who Wrote Ballads, 'On the Track' with Bill Bowyang. He also founded Red Rooster Press which has been instrumental in producing a number of folkloric studies and collections. His personal view of Australian Folklore is set down in Taking Aim Against the Sun: The Making of Traditions in Australia.

Dr Peter Attiwill
Peter Attiwill has 45 years of teaching and research experience in plant ecology. He has more than 100 publications, particularly in eucalypt and bushfire ecology. He is co-author of a number of books including Forest Soils and Nutrient Cycles (MUP, 1987) and co-editor of Nutrition of Eucalypts (CSIRP Publishing, 1996) and Ecology: An Australian Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Peter Attiwill is active in community affairs. He is currently a member of the boards of the Natural Resources Conservation League and of the Western Port Seagrass Partnership. He has been involved with the boards of a number of international journals and is currently a member of the board of Forest Ecology and Management.

Dr Martin Ball
Martin Ball holds a M.A. in medieval poetics from the University of Melbourne, and a Ph.D. in Australian cultural history from the University of Tasmania. His research focuses on cultural and narrative poetics, with particular interest in the role of Anzac mythology in the construction of Australian nationhood and national identity. Among his many interests he has published on C.E.W. Bean, Arthurian literature, J.R.R..Tolkien, and modern Russian literature. Martin was formerly editor of the Tasmanian literary/arts journal Siglo. He is currently writing a book on 'The Anzac Revival'.

In another life Martin Ball is music critic for the Australian, and also writes for The Strad (London). He is an advisor to various arts funding and award bodies. In addition to some 300 hundred reviews, he has published articles on string quartet writing in Australia, and on the cultural and historical poetics in Peter Sculthorpe's music.

Dr Ros Bandt is an internationally acclaimed sound artist, composer, researcher and scholar. Since 1977 she has pioneered interactive sound installations, sound sculptures, created sound playgrounds, spatial music systems and some 45 sound installations worldwide. She has curated many sound performances, exhibitions and events. Her original works are recorded on New Albion Records (USA), Move Records (Melbourne), Wergo (Germany), and EMI/ABC (Sydney). Her new book on Sound Sculpture was published by Fine Arts Press.

She is senior research fellow at the Australian Centre, the University of Melbourne, steering a large analytical study of sound design practice in Australia where she directs The Australian Sound Design Project and other sound focused research. 1.Blue Gold commissioned by Charisma on the politics of water, 33 minutes electro-acoustic sound, DVD, clarinet cello and sculptures, and 2.Sydney Road, the world in a street. 12 minute radiophonic piece commissioned by the ABC., a kaleidoscope of improvisatory meetings, journeys, resting places, a multi-cultural melee profiling the Road as it is experienced in March - April 2005.

Dr Jessica Carniel (Visiting)

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and migrated to Australia with her family in 1972. She has worked as an editor and book reviewer, and is the author of two novels that have been published internationally and translated into several languages. Awards for her fiction include the Commonwealth Prize for South-East Asia and the Pacific, and the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Award. Her most recent novel, The Hamilton Case, was a New York Times and Time magazine book of the year. Michelle now lives in Melbourne with her partner, the poet and translator Chris Andrews.

Prof Jim Davidson

Robyn Davidson - Macgeorge Fellow 2006
Robyn Davidson is an Australian writer of international renown, most widely known for her memoir Tracks, the record of her solo trek across Central Australia in 1977. Since that time she has travelled and published extensively, and consolidated a reputation as both an intellectual figure and an outstanding writer of essays, books, columns, reviews and feature film script. Her work has been translated into five languages, appeared on bestseller lists and won, and been shortlisted for, awards internationally.

Robyn has lectured at various international institutions and been recognised with academic awards, fellowships and scholarships. In addition she has committed a great deal of time to teaching and promoting creative writing.

The Australian Centre is hosting Robyn as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian Centre during her eight week visit, which will provide a unique opportunity for staff and students to interact closely with a key intellectual and creative figure in Australian and international culture, whose work traverses the areas of anthropology, literature, history and contemporary culture.

During her time at the Australian Centre, Robyn Davidson will continue writing her book Nomadism and produce an ‘Australian Quarterly Essay’ for this prestigious national publication.

Information about the Macgeorge Fellowship

Mr David Dodd

Dr Peter Edwards

Dr June Factor
Dr June Factor, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre, is well-known as a writer, folklorist and public advocate for civil liberties and free speech. She is past president of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties and of Friends of the ABC in Victoria.

In 1999, Dr Factor presented Australia's major archive of children's lore and language, the Australian Children's Folklore Collection, to the Museum of Victoria. The ACFC is the only collection held by the Museum to be listed on UNESCO’s ‘Memories of the World’ Register. ‘Play and Folklore’, the bi-annual publication Dr Factor co-edits, is now available on the web, at www.museum.vic.gov.au/playfolklore. In 2005 Dr Factor co-edited ‘Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children’ (Museum Victoria).

At present, Dr Factor is working on a social history of the 'friendly' and 'enemy' 'aliens' in the Employment Companies of the Australian Army during World War II, to be published by Melbourne University Publishing. She is also preparing another collection of children’s playground rhymes in the Far Out! Series, to be published by Brolly Books.

Her publications are numerous, and include: Captain Cook chased a Chook: Children's Folklore in Australia, Penguin; Australian Childhood: An Anthology, co-edited with Gwyn Dow, McPhee Gribble; the Far Out! Series (five books) beginning with Far out, Brussel Sprout!, Brolly Books; and Kidspeak: Australian Children's Words, Expressions and Games, MUP

Dr Paul Fox
Paul Fox completed degrees at Monash and Melbourne Universities, and developed many and varied interests; in landscape and garden history, the built environment, and museums - amongst others. His appointment as the Sir Thomas Ramsay Science and Humanities Scholar with the Museum of Victoria resulted in a travelling exhibition which explored cross-cultural understandings and representations of nature.

He has lectured and tutored extensively in history, urban design, landscape, and architectural aesthetics. Since 1994 he has been working with Australia Post: as Director of the National Philatelic Centre, and as an analyst.

His latest book, Clearings: Six colonial gardeners and their landscapes will be published in 2002.

Alison Goodman is the author of Singing The Dogstar Blues, a science-fiction comedy thriller, which won the 1998 Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel, was listed as a 1999 C.B.C. Notable Book, and was shortlisted for the 1999 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction. In 2003 it was also published in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and has been listed as an American Library Association's Best Young Adult Book of 2004. Alison was the 1999 D.J. O'Hearn Memorial Fellow at Melbourne University and is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Centre. She holds a Master of Arts, and teaches creative writing at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She has also published feature articles in The Age and various magazines, and her short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies. Alison is currently working on a fantasy series for young adults based on Imperial China; the first volume is due to be published in 2007 in both Australia and the United States.

Ms Sara Hardy

Dr James Hargrave
James Hargrave has degrees in Histroy (BA) and Economic History (PhD) from the University of Durham and a Graduate Diploma in Archive Administration from the University of Wales (Aberystwyth). He has pursued a career in archive work in various British public repositories and at the universities of Nottingham and Oxford, specialising in the cataloguing of large and complex collections (from dukes to prime ministers via business and legal collections), and in editing, having decided that he could do better than most who have edited him (his published catalogue of Sir Roy Welensky's papers clinched it). He is one of the editors of ANCIENT WEST & EAST, a journal focused on the periphery of the ancient world. His historical interests range from the ancient colonial world to the modern, central and eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, 20th century Ireland, constitutional evolution in the British Empire/Commonwealth, the development, financing and construction of the British and British-owned transport undertakings, etc. He has written on aspects of the local history of the north of England, on Rhodesian affairs and federalism, etc. He is currently pursuing some of the Austral(as)ian loose ends of his archive work, encompassing the Dudleys, Hothams, Stawells, a brace of Melbourne law firms, Sir Robert Menzies and Davies & Baird of Coburg. His only Australian publication to date is a long letter to Quadrant. He is a regular book reviewer.

Ms Noe Harsel

Dr Barry Hill
Barry Hill's long narrative poem, Ghosting William Buckley, won the 1994 N.S.W. Premier's Award for Poetry and his labour history, Sitting In, won the same award for Non-Fiction in 1992. He is the winner of other national awards for poetry, non-fiction and works for radio. His short fiction has been widely anthologised and translated. His most recent books include The Rock: Travelling to Uluru, and The Inland Sea (poems). Broken Song is his third and final book arising from a decade of work out of Central Australia. It was awarded a Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Nettie Palmer Prize for non-fiction, in 2003. Barry is Poetry Editor for The Australian and lives in Queenscliff, Victoria.

Ms Lilian Holt

Dr Jennifer Jones

Dr Robert Kenny

Ms Sandy Kirby
Sandy Kirby is an art historian whose publications include Sight Lines: Women's Art and Feminist Perspectives in Australia; Artists & Unions: a critical tradition and the edited collection, Ian Burn Art: Critical, Political. She has lectured at the School of Art and Design, Phillip Institute of Technology and in the School of Applied Communication at RMIT University. Her current research is exploring Australian visual culture, particularly art and advertising, in relation to modernism and consumer culture. She is a member of the Eight Hour Day Program Committee for the 150th celebration of the Eight Hour Day, 2006 and a member of the Cultural Affairs Advisory Board, City of Melbourne

Mr Alan Loney
Alan Loney, poet and freelance writer, made limited edition books by hand from 1974 to 1998, most recently as the printer and co-director of The Holloway Press at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. In 1995 Loney convened the first conference on The History of the Book in New Zealand and co-edited a series of essays derived from that conference (A Book in the Hand, eds Penny Griffith, Peter Hughes & Alan Loney, Auckland University Press 2000). Also published by him this year is Mondrian's flowers, with drawings by Max Gimblett, issued in a hand-made edition by Granary Books, New York. Due in November this year is Imago Mundi poems in collaboration with artist Bruno Leti. He is currently writing a descriptive bibliography of The Brindabella Press of Alec Bolton.

Associate Professor David Lowe

Dr Helen MacDonald

Dr Helen MacDonald is an award-winning historian and Senior Fellow at the Australian Centre, School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne. She investigates how human remains are turned into anatomical objects in hospitals, research facilities, museums and art galleries; why unethical uses of the dead have not, historically, been successfully deterred by law; and the history of human dissection, post-mortem examinations and organ transplants. Helen held an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship between 2005 and 2008, during which she undertook a major comparative study exploring encounters between medical scientists, dead bodies and the law in Britain and Australia. Her book, Human Remains: Dissection and its Histories (Yale University Press 2006, published in Australia as Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection, MUP 2005) won the biennial Victorian Premier?s Literary Award for a First Book of History and was short-listed for the Ernest Scott History Prize. Helen currently holds a literary grant from the Australia Council Literature Board. Her second book, Possessing the Dead: The Artful Science of Anatomy will be published in 2009. In addition, her work appears in journals, as well as newspapers, literary and science magazines. Amongst other activities, Helen is a member of the advisory boards of The Writing Centre for Scholars and Researchers, and the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne.

Hilary McPhee
Hilary McPhee AO, former publisher, editor and Chair of the Australia Council, was the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne until the end of 2005 where she helped establish the Writing Centre for Scholars and Researchers. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne.

She contributes widely to public debate and policy formulation for the arts, culture and the humanities, broadcasting and publishing. She co-founded McPhee Gribble Publishers (1975-92), was Publishing Director of Pan Macmillan (1992-4), and Chairman of the Australia Council for the Arts and the Major Organizations Fund (1994-7), Deputy Chair of Melbourne University Publishing 2002-05, a member of the Board of the State Library of Victoria 2000-2006 and Chair of its Writers and Readers Committee. Her publishing memoir, Other People's Words was published by Picador in 2001.

She is currently a member of the Malthouse’s Artistic Council, is a ‘columnist’ on Radio National’s Book Show and is working on another book. As a founding board member of New Matilda.com she is concerned to promote a Human Rights Act for Australia.

She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa Monash University, 1992. She was admitted to the Order of Australia in 2001.

Dr Kevin Murray
Kevin Murray is Director of Craft Victoria. He has curated a number of exhibitions that have toured nationally, including Symmetry: Crafts Meet Kindred Trades and Professions, How Say You, Turn the Soil: What if Australia had been colonised by someone else?, Water Medicine: Precious Works for an Arid Continent, and Haven: The Art and Craft of Refuge in Tasmania. For two years, he was curator of the interactive program for the Melbourne Film Festival. As well as articles for art publications, he also writes features for The Age newspaper and produces radio programs for the ABC. In 1996, he was awarded a VACB Writing Fellowship and his book Neverland: The Lost Continent of Australia is published by Pluto Press. His PhD was in the field of narrative psychology and he is currently working towards a series of events and a book on the theme of the south. Most exhibitions and articles are online at www.kitezh.com. Kevin Murray lives in Brunswick, Melbourne.

Mr Vincent O'Donnell

Dr Sheridan Palmer
Dr Sheridan Palmer has had extensive experience in the fine art world in Australia, having worked at the Australian National Gallery, Canberra and the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, and a number of commercial galleries. She is a professional curator, arts writer and academic, and has degrees from the Victorian College of the Arts, La Trobe University and a PhD from the University of Melbourne. She is currently researching the cultural history of art history in Australia. Her forthcoming book, Outsiders, Insiders: European émigré scholars in the fine arts, Melbourne, 1940-1960, to be published by Australian Scholarly Publishing, establishes the importance of the Europeans in the transformation of art and culture in post-war Melbourne. She has published widely in art journals, academic journals and exhibition catalogues and was a contributor to Victorian Icon: The Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, The Exhibition Trustees in conjunction with Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1996, and to The Australian Dictionary of Biography. Her most recent exhibition is The Goddess Grins: Albert Tucker and the female image, at Heide Museum of Modern Art, March – October 2007. Sheridan has been an Honorary fellow of the Australian Centre since 2005.

Dr Belinda Nemec
Dr Belinda Nemec has worked in curatorial, registration and management roles with museums, heritage places and cultural collections for over 20 years. She holds degrees in music and museum studies, and completed her PhD at the Australian Centre in 2006 with a thesis on the topic 'The Grainger Museum in its museological and historical contexts'. She is particularly interested in the history and architecture of early 20th century museums; period rooms; and autobiographical museums and collecting. She is currently researching the museum work of the American architect and community planner Clarence Stein, with support from Cornell University. Belinda holds the position of Cultural Collections Coordinator at the University of Melbourne and is the convenor of the History of the University Unit.

Professor Robert Pascoe
Professor Robert Pascoe is Dean Laureate at Victoria University, Melbourne, having served as the foundation Dean of Arts for 16 years. He is a social historian with particular interests in Catholic education, Australian intellectual traditions, the university in history, historiographical debates, and the relationships between ethnicity, social theory and local identity. With Stuart Macintyre and Nikki Henningham he is writing a history of the social sciences in postwar Australia. He is also completing a biography of Monsignor John F Kelly (1910 - 1992), a leading Catholic educator and catechist in Australia. Recent books have included Sierakowski: Five Generations (2002), Grollo in the Year 2000 (2001), A Community Portrait: Lifetimes in the City of Whittlesea (2001), The Seasons of Treviso (1995) and The Winter Game: The Complete History of Australian Football (1995).

Professor Emeritus John Poynter
Professor John Poynter has been a Professorial Fellow at the Centre since 1995. A former Ernest Scott Professor of History and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and one-time Dean of Music, Visual and Performing Arts, he has returned to writing history. Publications since retirement include A Place Apart. The University of Melbourne: Decades of Challenge (with Carolyn Rasmussen) (1996), Doubts and Certainties: A Life of Alexander Leeper (1997), the chapter 'The Rhodes Scholarships in Australia' in The History of the Rhodes Trust 1902-1999 (ed. Sir Anthony Kenny, 2000), and Mr Felton's Bequests (2003), a biography of Alfred Felton and a history of the Felton Bequests, which won the Victorian Community History Award (Best Publication) in 2004. Work in progress includes a study based on the diaries of Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, Governor-General of Australia 1914-1920.

Ms Judith Pugh (Visiting)

Dr Susannah Radstone

Hannie Rayson is a graduate of Melbourne University and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from La Trobe University in 1997. She is a senior fellow of The Australian Centre at The University of Melbourne. Hannie co-founded Theatreworks in 1980 and has been Writer-in-Residence at the Mill Theatre, Playbox Theatre, La Trobe University, Monash University and VCA. Hannie's theatre credits include: Hotel Sorrento, Falling From Grace, Scenes From A Separation (Co-written with Andrew Bovell) and Life After George which achieved critical acclaim across Australia winning the 2000 Victorian Premier Literary Award, the 2001 Green Room Award for Best New Australian Play and Best New Australian Work at the 2001 Helpmann Awards. It was the first play to be nominated for the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award in its 44 year history.

In 2003, her play Inheritance opened at the Melbourne Theatre Company followed by a sold out season at Sydney Theatre Company, winning the 2004 Helpmann Awards for Best Play and Best New Australian Work. Last year, Sydney Theatre Company produced a highly successful revival of Scenes from a Separation at the Playhouse Theatre, Sydney Opera House. Hannie's latest play Two Brothers directed by Simon Phillips opened at Melbourne Theatre Company in April this year and recently transferred to Sydney Theatre Company and will tour regionally in NSW. Hannie has also written for television and film.

Dr Sarah Scott

Dr Paul Sinclair
Dr Paul Sinclair Is an environmental historian and writer, and author of The Murray: A history of a river, its people and ecology, published by Melbourne University Press in 2001. He has worked on collaborative exhibitions with internationally recognized artists including Mandy Martin and the late John Davis. Since September 1999 Paul has been working at the 900 000 hectare Bookmark Biosphere Reserve in South Australia documenting and publicizing landscape restoration and conservation work being done by community volunteers and scientists. He has established Bookmark's website, published weekly stories in the Murray Pioneer (Renmark's local newspaper) and produced a Bookmark Brief.

Judith Smart
Judith Smart has published on Australian women's organisations in the first half of the 20th Century, as well as on women and political protest, women and religion, venereal diseases, labour youth organisation, the impact of war, the Miss Australia beauty contest and the Billy Graham crusade in Australia in 1959. She is currently working on a book on Melbourne during World War I, researching a history of mass women's organisations from 1915 to 1960, and (with Professor Marian Quartly) writing a history of the National Council of Women of Australia. She is part of the Australian Women’s Archive Project (led by Professor Patricia Grimshaw of the University of Melbourne) and is a past editor of Australian Historical Studies and present editor of the Victorian Historical Journal. She is also involved in an ARC Linkage project with Dr Suellen Murray (Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University), together with Domestic Violence Victoria, to supervise a history of the women’s refuge movement in this state.

Dr Charlotte Smith

Bob Speechley's career reflects a deep commitment to education, university management and cultural development. He has contributed to a range of cultural programs including the Sidney Myer Free Concerts, the Grainger Museum and the Faculty of Music programs. He has developed education related schemes in areas as diverse as teacher training, Continuing Education and International exchange. He has been a key participant in the cultural and working life of Melbourne University for over thirty years.

Dr Paul Strangio

Dr Peta Stephenson

Dr Meg Tasker
Dr Meg Tasker is an honorary Senior Fellow at the Australian Centre, and a Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. She has recently published Struggle and Storm: the Life and Death of Francis Adams (1862-1893) (Melbourne University Press, 2001). She is currently working on a study of Australian journalists in Britain in the late nineteenth century, a project funded by an ARC Discovery grant.

Professor Russell West-Pavlov

Writer and former journalist Sally White has a long-standing association with the University. She graduated with a combined history/politics honours degree in 1965 and later returned to complete her Masters in the late 1990s. She served on the Arthur Norman Smith Memorial Lecture committee for several years and was vice-chair of the Department of Physiology’s Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee from 1991-94. She was course co-ordinator in journalism and senior lecturer at RMIT University from 1992-96, having left daily journalism in 1987 after 16 years with The Age where she was variously a general reporter, feature writer, arts editor, science editor and executive assistant to the managing director. In the late 90s, she spent 18 months as visiting professor at the China School of Journalism in Beijing.

The author of Reporting In Australia, Australia’s leading journalism textbook, she has written four books, the most recent of which is an introductory text for international students, Understanding Australia. She has also written numerous book chapters and edited several conference proceedings and books. Among them is Conquerors’ Road: an eyewitness report of Germany 1945, by her father, noted war correspondent Osmar White. She is a founding board member of the C.E.W. Bean Foundation, one of the industry partners in the ARC linkage grant funding for Dr Fay Anderson and Dr Richard Trembath for their history of Australian war correspondents from the Sudan to the present.

Ms Jo Wills

Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe was the founding Director of the Australian Centre 1989-1994 and returned to the Centre as a Professorial Fellow in 1998. Chris is a distinguished poet and critic who has won many awards for his work, including The Age Book of the Year, in 1995. He regularly gives readings, both here and overseas, and was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard, 1987-88. Recent publications include Imagining Australia: Literature and Culture in the New New World, edited with Judith Ryan, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Committee on Australian Studies, 2004) and Next (Brunswick: Gungurru Press, 2004), as well as a series of poems in a number of American, British, Australian and Irish journals.

Chris has also recently completed three ABC broadcasts on the Lingua Franca programme, treating "The Language of Poetry" and was the recipient of a travel grant from Harvard to take part in A.A.A.L.S. conference in April 2005 and a forthcoming travel grant from the Palladio Foundation to work at the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari, for the month of October, 2005.