As part of History Month we partner with Professional Historians Association (Victoria & Tasmania) to host an event where three historians talk about a moment of amazing coincidence or serendipity in their research – it could be coming across a vital piece of information or finding just the right contact or network, seemingly by chance. It is always a great night to hear from young historians who research a remarkably wide range of subjects.

The hosts for the evening are Andrew Lemon for the RHSV and Sophie Couchman for PHA.

Speakers:

• Kylie Andrews – Searching for the ABC’s ‘lost’ women producers
  • What was it like to work at the ABC in the 1950s and 1960s? More specifically, what was it like to work at the national broadcaster if one was an ambitious, outspoken woman?  In this presentation Kylie Andrews will share some insights into what she discovered when writing her book, ‘Trailblazing Women of Australian Public Broadcasting, 1945-1975’. Drawing on voices from the past, Kylie will discuss how certain methods proved vital in unearthing surprising evidence, evidence that resuscitates women’s forgotten contributions to radio and television in Australia in the post-war decades.
  • Kylie Andrews is a consulting historian and researcher whose work spans a range of historical fields and formats. She writes about Australian media and communications and produces commissioned histories for corporate, industry and philanthropic organisations. With a passion for studying media, gender and production cultures through biography, Kylie has recently written a women’s history of the ABC, titled ‘Trailblazing Women of Australian Public Broadcasting, 1945-1975’.

• Nicole Davis – In Arcadia: Finding the Owners of Nineteenth-Century Arcades in Australia
  • Although nineteenth-century arcades in Australia are often viewed as feminine spaces for women to gather and shop in comfort, it is usually men that are identified as those who built and owned these buildings. However, deeper investigation into a variety of archival records reveals that a number of these were the inspiration of or funded by women. At times their ownership is fully acknowledged in print media but, more often, their husbands, relatives or other men are credited as the entrepreneurs inspired to build and who ran them. In this talk, Nicole Davis will discuss some famous and some forgotten arcades in Australia, the women that owned or ran them, and the ways that archives can reveal unexpected stories of women’s involvement in business and property ownership.
  • Nicole Davis received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2023. Her research interests centre on urban history and heritage, with a particular focus on Australian urban spaces and their connections to the wider world. She has a Masters in Museum Studies from the University of Sydney, has worked as a curator in Sydney and Melbourne museums, and has taught Heritage & Museum Studies at Masters Level. Nicole is a research assistant in School of Historical & Philosophical Studies, part of a team working on the ARC LIEF, Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia (LE230100079), and Research Fellow at Melbourne Graduate School of Education at University of Melbourne, investigating the archiving and sharing of qualitative research data.

• Miranda Francis – Footscray High School creche – oral histories and archives.
  • In this presentation, Miranda Francis will use the micro- history of the Footscray High School creche to illuminate women’s changing experience of work and family life in the 1970s. Comparing archival documents and oral history interviews she will reveal the complex interconnections between novel ideas and conservative resistance, and local action and public policy. (Image: Footscray High School Crèche, 1978. Photograph courtesy Jillian Hargreaves.)

• • Miranda Francis received her BA in History from the University of Melbourne in 1994 and MHist (focused on oral history and heritage) from Monash University in 2010. She is in the final stages of a PhD thesis at La Trobe University (Mothers Remember: An Oral History) which uses oral history to explore how mothers in suburban Melbourne in the second half of the twentieth century remembered the emotions and experiences of motherhood. She has been an academic librarian for over twenty years, in Melbourne (RMIT and Monash universities) and in Morocco (Al-Akhawayn University, Ifrane). She has published widely in journals such as Provenance, Oral History (UK), Victorian Historical Journal and Oral History Australia Journal and a book chapter in Feminist Perspectives on Young Mothers and Young Mothering.

Housekeeping

This event will be hybrid – both delivered in person at the RHSV’s Drill Hall home and via Zoom. For those booking Zoom tickets, the log-in details will be sent to you 24 hours prior to the event.

From 5:30pm to 6pm, as with most RHSV events, we’ll be serving refreshments before the lecture starts at 6pm.

An automatic confirmation email is sent to you on booking – please check your Spam or Junk Mail in-box as these emails often go astray.

This is a History Month event