Empowering Australia: Collecting and Interpreting the Material Culture of Australian Technology in New South Wales, 1880-1972. In Australian social history, the industrial museum occupies an important but largely forgotten place. Today, Sydney's exciting Powerhouse Museum is increasingly conscious of its legacy and lineage, dating from its creation as the Technological and Sanitary Museum of 1880. Nevertheless, much of the material culture of manufacture and innovation that lies in its collect ....Empowering Australia: Collecting and Interpreting the Material Culture of Australian Technology in New South Wales, 1880-1972. In Australian social history, the industrial museum occupies an important but largely forgotten place. Today, Sydney's exciting Powerhouse Museum is increasingly conscious of its legacy and lineage, dating from its creation as the Technological and Sanitary Museum of 1880. Nevertheless, much of the material culture of manufacture and innovation that lies in its collections remains uninterpreted and inaccessible to historians and the public. This project seeks to 'recover' the past of the Museum, and its role in Sydney's heritage of research, design and the applied arts; and to demonstrate the dynamic relevance of historical research to the Museum's present and forward plannning.Read moreRead less
Vines, Wine and Identity: The Hunter Valley NSW and Changing Australian Taste. Australia is a leader in global wine trade and tourism, and Australian drinkers are shifting from beer to wine. Yet little is known about the regional communities that make wine, how wine production has shaped their identity, and how producers have changed national culture by creating a taste for their wines. This project explores these themes through a historical sociological study of Australia's oldest wine region, ....Vines, Wine and Identity: The Hunter Valley NSW and Changing Australian Taste. Australia is a leader in global wine trade and tourism, and Australian drinkers are shifting from beer to wine. Yet little is known about the regional communities that make wine, how wine production has shaped their identity, and how producers have changed national culture by creating a taste for their wines. This project explores these themes through a historical sociological study of Australia's oldest wine region, the Hunter Valley New South Wales. It traces intra- and transnational networks of people, knowledge and wine. This aims to in turn reveal elements of the power nexus in wine production, trade and consumption to provide critical new insights into Australia's change to a wine making and wine drinking country.Read moreRead less
Multicultural Australia in national and state libraries. This project aims to develop strategies to assist major Australian libraries to enhance their library collections of histories of Australia as a multicultural nation. The project will develop a new methodology for evaluating multicultural collections, and new policies and strategies to develop and provide access to these collections. Benefits will include enhanced understanding of Australia’s history and heritage, and Australia’s identity ....Multicultural Australia in national and state libraries. This project aims to develop strategies to assist major Australian libraries to enhance their library collections of histories of Australia as a multicultural nation. The project will develop a new methodology for evaluating multicultural collections, and new policies and strategies to develop and provide access to these collections. Benefits will include enhanced understanding of Australia’s history and heritage, and Australia’s identity as a multicultural nation.Read moreRead less
History, heritage and environmental change in a deindustrialised landscape. As the first collaborative and multidisciplinary, scholarly and community-based study of a forgotten shale-mining settlement in the environmentally and culturally significant Jamison Valley, this project aims to advance knowledge and enable cross-generational engagement with the history and heritage of an industrial landscape, thereby improving our understanding of the long-term impact of deindustrialisation. By combinin ....History, heritage and environmental change in a deindustrialised landscape. As the first collaborative and multidisciplinary, scholarly and community-based study of a forgotten shale-mining settlement in the environmentally and culturally significant Jamison Valley, this project aims to advance knowledge and enable cross-generational engagement with the history and heritage of an industrial landscape, thereby improving our understanding of the long-term impact of deindustrialisation. By combining archaeological, archival and oral evidence the project aims to provide new insights into everyday working and family life, community, gender, transiency and migration that can contribute to conservation of this site and its industrial heritage, cultural heritage tourism and education at a time of environmental change. Read moreRead less
Cultures of Coast and Sea: maritime environmental, cultural and ethnographic histories of north-east Australia, 1770-2010. Using new cross-disciplinary approaches and methods, this collaboration between university scholars, museum curators and a philanthropic foundation will study the impact of maritime and marine environmental and cultural change on the peoples and habitats of the Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Strait from the eighteenth century to the present.