Scholars at work.

Ayres, Marie-Louise

The National Library of Australia awards several Harold White Fellowships to senior researchers every year, with each Fellow spending between three and six months exploring the Library's collections. Many past Fellowships have resulted in major publications, and all past recipients attest to the value of uninterrupted time and unfettered access to the Library's rich collections.

For various reasons there has been some 'overlap' between 2007 and 2008 Fellows, with one 2007 Fellow taking up her Fellowship at the beginning of 2008, and one 2008 Fellow taking up hers during 2007. This report therefore covers both years.

The Fellows room was very busy throughout 2007, with seven Fellows in residence.

Rowena Ward deepened her research on the human legacy of Japanese colonialism, especially in Manchuria. While Dr Ward, a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, concentrated her research in the Library's extensive Asian book and serial collections, she also utilised maps of Manchukuo in the Maps Collection. Like a number of Fellows, she identified many small research 'gaps' adjacent to her main research interests and intends to pursue some of these in the future.

Narangoa Li, a reader in Japanese studies at the Australian National University, also focused on the Japanese state of Manchukuo in Manchuria and inner Mongolia. Dr Li made sustained use of the Library's Asian Collections over many months to research the occupation of inner Mongolia by Japan between 1932 and 1945, in particular, movements towards Mongolian self-determination.

Graeme Skinner undertook research to support the writing of the second volume of his biography of Australian composer, Peter Sculthorpe. The first volume, Peter Sculthorpe: The Making of an Australian Composer--covering the early years of Sculthorpe's life--was published in 2007 and has been nominated for the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. Mr Skinner made heavy use of Sculthorpe's extensive personal papers (and those of other Australian composers), and of the Library's rich published music collections.

Julie Stephens investigated ideas of the buried 'maternal' missing from official records of Australian feminism in the 1960s. A senior lecturer at Victoria University, Dr Stephens made extensive use of the Library's Oral History and Manuscripts Collections to explore themes of cultural memory, and the ways in which memories about 1960's activist movements are constructed and shaped.

Peter Hamburger, who recently retired from a senior position in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, is researching and writing a life of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Dutch East India administrator, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. In addition to learning about the man himself, Snouck Hurgronje's often colourful life and long career provide Mr Hamburger with a prism for examining colonial administration and statecraft in what is now Indonesia.

Nathalie Nguyen, Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Melbourne, made extensive use of the Library's Oral History and Manuscripts Collections in her continuing research into the experiences of Vietnamese refugees resettled in Australia. Dr Nguyen's recent Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian Women's Narratives was shortlisted for the 2007 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards just before she took up her Fellowship. Dr Nguyen will complete her Fellowship in 2008.

Catharine Coleborne took up her 2007 Fellowship at the beginning of 2008 for family reasons. Dr Coleborne, a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato, is undertaking a comparative study of 'madness in the family' in the Australasian colonial world. She anticipates making heavy use of the Library's Newspaper Collections to explore responses to mental illness among Australian and New Zealand individuals, families, communities and the medical profession. She will also be continuing her 'needle in a haystack' searches of colonial era archives to find ways in which mental illness was articulated--or was silent--in family diaries and correspondence.

Five Fellowships were awarded for 2008.

Sarah (Sally) Paine, Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, continues the 2007 theme of studies in the Manchuria of the 1930s and 1940s. Dr Paine's research is on Japanese-Chinese-Soviet rivalry during these decades, with a special focus on the Chinese theatre of World War II. Dr Paine is making considerable use of the Library's Chinese language periodicals and is preparing a manuscript to capture her decade-long research, undertaken in multiple languages and at archives on several different continents. Dr Paine commenced her Fellowship in 2007, and will be resident at the Library for the first half of 2008.

Peter Robertson will use the papers of John Bolton to prepare a full-length biography of this important Australian astronomer--played by Sam Neill in the acclaimed Australian film, The Dish. An historian of science and research coordinator at RMIT University, Mr Robertson knew Professor Bolton well and interviewed him for a history of the Parkes telescope, and the two had an extensive personal correspondence before Professor Bolton's death in 1993.

Susan Taaffe will investigate the work of activists for Indigenous rights between the 1950s and 1980s. Dr Taaffe, an Australian Research Council Fellow at Monash University, will use the Library's Manuscripts and Oral History Collections to explore the relationships between key Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists, and the ways in which the 'divide' between people of different cultures and backgrounds was overcome to effect social change.

Susan Cochrane will research the papers of Sir William Dargie to prepare a substantial work on this leading figure of the Commonwealth Arts Advisory Board during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his role in developing cultural and collecting policies. Dr Cochrane, who has just completed a University of Queensland Postdoctoral Fellowship, will focus particularly on Sir William's active collection of Melanesian art and culture, and consider his role in the context of the developing study of collectors and collecting.

David Foster is one of Australia's finest novelists. In 2008, Dr Foster will read the Library's 10 volumes of Arabist Sir Richard Burton's 1885 Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, with Introductory and Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Muslim Men, and explore other rare and modern books on the tales of Shahrazad to support his work on a novel set in Central Asia in 822 AD. Dr Foster's Fellowship is supported by the Kollsman Trust, established in memory of Australian writer Ray Mathew.

Dr Marie-Louise Ayres

Curator of Manuscripts