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About Visiting Scholars

The Library’s Visiting Scholar program is a competitive and prestigious initiative aimed to support and foster writing, research and study. The program provides a room and behind-the-scenes access to Library staff. Research topics have ranged from early colonisation of Australia through to investigations of contemporary life.

The principal purpose of the Visiting Scholar program is to faciliate and support the use of the Library's unique collections for a sustained period of study and research. Project proposals must focus on original materials and identify a clear outcome.

Dr Lisa Murray and Ms Georgia McWhinney

Dr Lisa Murray and Ms Georgia McWhinney

It is expected that Visiting Scholars will:

  • Be researchers who are able to demonstrate a record of scholarship, such as publications or other research outcomes.
  • Present a project that directly draws on the unique collections of the State Library of New South Wales.
  • Present a project that has a specific time frame and outcome.
  • Have support from an industry employer or research supervisor, emphasising the value of a Visiting Scholarship to the applicant.
  • Submit to the Mitchell Librarian a brief summary of their completed project, copies of any research outcomes (presentations and publications) and a bibliography.
  • Visiting Scholars may be invited to contribute to Library publications or the Library’s series of Scholar Talks.
  • The Library is unable to offer any funding to Visiting Scholars. A successful Visiting Scholar is not precluded from applying for a paid Fellowship at the conclusion of their project.

Applications are subject to the approval of the Visiting Scholars committee, staff resources as well as capacity in the Donald & Myfanwy Horne Room.

Applications are open each year, with the opening and closing dates for applications the same as for the Library's paid Fellowship opportunities.

2024

Dr Paula Hamilton, for her project: Intimate Strangers: Working the 20th-century Australian home. 

2024

Dr Perry McIntyre, for her project: Free Immigration of Irish Young Women from the Workhouses of Ireland during the Famine, 1848-50.

2024

Liz Giuffre, for her project: Hidden and Diverse Histories of Australian Popular Music and Culture as Captured in the Street Press.

2024

Rebekah Jenkin, for her project: Life after Death: The contribution of asylum residents to the establishment of the Sydney Medical Program.

2024

Atul Joshi, for his project: Beyond Trauma: The joyous life and times of trans woman Alison Clark, and a portrait of LGBTIQA+ Sydney in the 1980s, told using techniques of creative non-fiction and speculative biography.  

2024

Kath Kenny, for her project: The Dance-Drama Genius of Margaret Barr, 1904–91.

2024

Dashiell Moore, for his project: Literature and Migration in the Australian Archipelago.

2024

Verity Oswin, for her project: Brokenhomeland: Rewriting Mitchell's "Australia Felix", fieldnotes towards a feminist pastoral.

2024

Drew Pettifer, for his project: Pink Bans: When the Builders Laborers Federation stood up for queer rights.  

2024

Michelle Scott Tucker, for her project: A Biography of Louisa Lawson.

2024

Suzanne Smith, for her project: The Save our Sons Movement during the Vietnam War.

2024

Jeff Sparrow, for his project: Render it Barely: A life of Lesbia Harford.

2024

Rob Thomson, for his project: Libraries and Librarianship in the Australian Territory of New Guinea 1960-75. 

2024

David Turner, for his project: History of the Australian Merchant Shipping Fleet through the Prism of Shipwrecks.

2024

Jessica Urwin, for her project: Radioactive Wildernesses: The Australian anti-uranium movement and the construction of wilderness on Mirrar land, 1972-77.

2024

Robin Walsh, for his project: The Making of the Man: The private life and letters of Lachlan Macquarie.

2024

Rachael Weaver, for her project: Human Relationships to Native Bird Species since the beginnings of European Settlement in Australia. 

2024

Bronwyn Rennex, for her project: Magical thinking, madness and the law: Three women in extremis. 

2023

Dr Kerrie Davies, for her project: Miles Franklin Under Cover: 1902-07.

2023

Ann Arnold, for her project: Murrumbidgee Stories: A social, environmental and industrial history of the forces that shape a river.

2023

Associate Professor Ilaria Vanni, for her project: Green Square and Sydney South Water Stories.

2023

Jodi Vial, for her project: "It tells me you have gone on, singing": Writing the Hunter River/Coquun through decay and transformation.

2023

Associate Professor Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, for her project: "We called it justice for women": Jean Arnot and feminism between the waves.

2023

Associate Professor Di Kelly, for her project: The Times and Life of Judge Jim Staples.

2022

Bri Lee, for her project: Providence/Provenance.

2022

Dr Deidre O’Connell, for her project: The Pakie's Club: Augusta and Duncan Macdougall's Sydney, 1919–45.

2020

Dr Peter Hobbins, for his project: Airframes and Afterlives: The affective artefacts of aviation accidents.

2020

Dr Gareth Wearne, for his project: Prolegomena and Marginalia of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century English Bibles in the Richardson Collection of the State Library of New South Wales.

2020

Rebekah Ward, for her project: Press Reception of Australian Literature, 1888-1949.

2020

Tess Gardner, for her project: Australian Journalists in Republican China 1897-1949.

2019

Kelly Lewer, for her project: Champions of Activism: The history of feminism and domestic violence support services in New South Wales.

2019

Georgia McWhinney, for her project: Doctored Uniforms: Dress, disease, and the British Dominion Forces’ altered uniforms and vernacular medicine in the First World War.

2019

Dr Mark Dunn, for his project: The Convict Valley: A new history of the Hunter Valley. 

2018

Mr Ryan Cropp, for his project: A Thesis Examining the Life and Work of Donald Horne.

2018

Dr Lisa Murray, for her project: Australian Cemeteries: A history and graveside companion.

2018

Dr Margo Beasley, for her project: A Biography of Dr Eric Payton Dark.

2018 (Inaugural)

Dr Geoffrey Cains, for his project: The Nature of the Acquisition and Embargoes of Archival Material by Public Institutions.