Redmond Barry Fellowship

The Redmond Barry Fellowship is named in honour of Sir Redmond Barry (1813-1880), a founder of the University of Melbourne and the State Library of Victoria. The first Fellowship was awarded in 2004 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his laying of the foundation stones for both institutions on 3 July 1854.

The Fellowship shall be awarded to scholars and writers to facilitate research and the production of works of literature that utilise the superb collections of the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne.

Up to $20,000 shall be awarded to assist with travel, living and research expenses. Fellows will be based at the State Library of Victoria for three to six months. During this period, Fellows will be expected to pursue their own project, present a lecture or short seminar series open to the public, Library and University communities, and submit a brief report at the conclusion of their Fellowship.

Fellowships are open to scholars and writers from Australia and overseas. The Fellow’s project may be in any discipline or area in which the Library and the University have strong collections.

Applications close on Thursday 24 April 2008.

Previous Redmond Barry Fellowship Recipients

2007

Writer and bookseller, Ms Kristin Otto
Capital: Melbourne when it was the capital of Australia 1901-1927

Capital: Melbourne when it was the capital of Australia 1901-1927  is to be published as a trade paperback by Text  Publishing in 2009.  The Redmond Barry Fellowship was used to research and write a substantial section of this book.  The bulk of material used for the project is held by the State Library of Victoria in Books, Newspapers, Manuscripts, and Pictures; and by the University of Melbourne Special Collections and Archives.  The story of Melbourne then is an intriguing web of extraordinary people and events.

2006

Historian, Dr Kathleen Fennessy
Ploughing with One Heifer: Colonial Victorians Learning the Land
Research for a book

Dr Kathleen Fennessy was awarded the third Redmond Barry Fellowship for her historical research project, ‘Ploughing with One Heifer: Colonial Victorians Learning the Land’. The project focused on the way settlers, who were often inexperienced, learned about the land and learned to use it productively during the period when the Colony of Victoria’s Selection Acts attempted to establish an independent yeomanry. It was not primarily concerned with the way the Land Acts worked or with the development of agricultural production or with the establishment of formal agricultural education. Rather, it aimed to understand informal agricultural learning during the 1860s and 1870s, and the movement towards more structured agricultural education.
 
Research for the project was undertaken at the State Library of Victoria, and principally focused on rare books, manuscripts and newspapers in the Heritage Collection. The following broad areas were investigated:

• Colonists' experiences and their reflections as they learned to manage the land.
• The way the press advised people about the land and promoted agricultural learning. 
• The efforts made by agricultural and horticultural societies to provide for informal learning through regular meetings and shows.The Board of Agriculture and the Department of Agriculture and their roles in disseminating information and encouraging agricultural education.  

 The Fellowship provided a wonderful opportunity to undertake a sustained period of research for a proposed book manuscript. The State Library is not only a remarkable storehouse of learning but also a convivial place. The Fellowship allowed for the solitariness of research to be relieved by the stimulating companionship of the Library’s Creative Fellows and by the thoughtful assistance of the staff.

2005

Poet and Essayist, Olivier Burckhardt                             
Pencilled Lines on Poetry

As an independent essayist and poet without formal academic background, the opportunity to undertake research and work on “Pencilled Lines on Poetry: Essays on East-West Poetics” was exhilarating. The Redmond Barry Fellowship enabled me to carry out the extensive preliminary research required for the overall plan of the book-length project. The time, workspace, extensive access to both libraries and research facilities of The University of Melbourne and The State Library of Victoria, and the opportunity to interact with the academic community and general public, enabled me to undertake an intensive and challenging work period. Though a series of public seminars/talks at both institutions I was able to present various facets of the project as a work-in-progress, the resulting interaction and feedback that this generated enabled me to fine-tune and hone both specific and general aspects of the project which revolves around a cross-cultural definition of the scope or essential qualities of poetry.

In terms of professional development, the Fellowship enabled me to more confidently identify and address specific audiences, and establish links with a professional network that is ongoing.

2004

Historian, Dr Leonarda Kovacic
From ‘Lubras’ to ‘Belles’: Representations of Aboriginal Women, 1850 - 1950

The original title of my project was ‘From “Lubras” to “Belles”: Representations of Aboriginal Women in Photography, 1850-1950’. I identified and analysed (mostly colonial) photographs of Aboriginal women in the La Trobe Picture Collection. Towards the end of my time at the SLV, I became aware of three sets of images of Aboriginal women in the nude and semi-nude, taken by different photographers from the 1890s through to the late 1930s. The interpretation of these images from aesthetic and artistic (rather than purely historical or anthropological) perspectives has come to form the basis of my first academic monograph, Aboriginal Nudes, which is now nearing completion (as at July 2007).

Other research outcomes include three conference papers: 1) ‘Aboriginal Nudes’, presented at the ‘Sex in History’ Symposium at the University of Melbourne in 2004; 2) ‘Strewn Beauty: Clara Phillips and La Perouse in the Early 1900s’, given at the ‘Narrative Research’ Symposium at Victoria University in 2006; and 3) ‘An Aboriginal Belle of La Perouse’, delivered at the 2006 annual conference of the Australian Historical Association at the Australian National University in Canberra.

The project further developed into a postdoctoral fellowship at the Australian National University in 2005-2006, and turned into an investigation of the lives of some of the Aboriginal women who posed for these photographs. This has resulted in the findings and discoveries that—once published—will undoubtedly enrich the knowledge base of the La Trobe Picture Collection (not much is known about these images) as well as that of Australian colonial scholarship in general. In 2006 I presented a seminar paper at the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU, entitled ‘Beauty, Passion, Sex and Desire Across Borders: Writing Women’s Lives from a Transcultural Perspective’. The paper, which crossed and explored the (fluid) boundaries between local and national history, transnational biography, oral history, photography and creative writing, linked lives of two—otherwise unrelated—women from the opposite sides of the world: a Croatian woman from the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia and an Aboriginal woman from La Perouse.

The Redmond Barry Fellowship was invaluable in that it provided me with financial and physical resources to conduct my research and granted me unlimited access to the otherwise restricted areas of the State Library.

Guidelines for Applicants (including Application Form and process)

Web site links:

State Library of Victoria

University of Melbourne Cultural Collections