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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
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.
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.