Meet The Team
Chief Investigators • Partner Investigators • Research Scholars • Administration
Chief Investigators
Tracy Ireland • Ross Gibson • Tim Sherratt • Ross Harley • Annie Clarke • Peter Hobbins • Mitchell Whitelaw • Jane Ferguson
A/Prof Tracy Ireland
Associate Professor Tracy Ireland is a researcher and lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. She is an archaeologist and heritage specialist with over twenty five years’ experience across government, private practice and the academic sectors. Her research focuses on how the past impacts the present and how shared memory is constructed through heritage. Heritage of the Air builds directly upon her research strengths in heritage management, social and community values, and evolving forms of heritage practice. As well as heading up the project and coordinating inputs from all researchers, she will also lead Case Study 1: Air Memories; conduct research into community based heritage practices, and collaborate in developing exhibitions to celebrate the 2020 centenary of civil aviation in Australia.
Prof Ross Gibson
Professor Ross Gibson is Centenary Professor of Creative and Cultural Research at the University of Canberra. In this role he works collaboratively to produce books, films and artworks. His main interests are contemporary arts, communication and the history of environmental consciousness in colonial cultures, particularly in Australia and the Pacific. His work spans several media and disciplines. In the Heritage of the Air project, he will lead Case Study 3: An Ocean Apart? and curate and design exhibition components, including the development of video-essays and visual-digital story-telling; identify key aviation related collections and analyse emerging themes. He will also contribute to Case Study 1: Air Memories integrating existing digitised collections with targeted mining of novel sources, such as training and promotional films.
A/Prof Tim Sherratt
Associate Professor Tim Sherratt is an historian in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra who researches the possibilities and politics of digital cultural collections. He is interested in using digital tools to create new cultural experiences and new forms of publication, exploring how digitisation projects change our relationship with the past and digital heritage. He has worked across the cultural heritage sector and have been developing online resources relating to libraries, archives, museums and history since 1993. He will lead Case Study 2: Take-Off to Touchdown and oversee all the digital components of the project, and investigate how digital tools and techniques can be applied to the project’s research themes.
Prof Ross Harley
Professor Ross Harley is Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design and Chair of Arts and Culture at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He is an award-winning artist, writer and educator whose career crosses the bounds of traditional and creative arts research. His role in the project will focus on digital innovation and the creative interpretation of visual culture. He will contribute to developing the framework for working with digital assets and synthesise, analyse and draw together materials for the multiple contexts of Case Study 3: An Ocean Apart?
A/Prof Annie Clarke
Associate Professor Annie Clarke is an archaeologist at the University of Sydney and convenor of the Heritage Studies Program in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her research interests include the archaeology of Arnhem Land, the archaeology of cross-cultural engagement and colonialism, rock art and mark-making practices, ethnographic collections and objects, community archaeology, narrative and archaeology and heritage. She will analyse aviation material culture held in regional, national and international collections, including Qantas and the SFO Museum at San Francisco Airport, as well as contribute to Case Study 1: Air Memories, investigating Indigenous aviation–related art and cultural practice.
Dr Peter Hobbins
Dr Peter Hobbins holds an ARC (Australian Research Council) DECRA (Distinguished Early Career Researcher Award) fellowship in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. As an historian of science, technology and medicine, he is intrigued by the ways that knowledge is generated and applied, especially through interactions with non-humans. He has explored this topic via publications on medical research, human-animal relations, quarantine, military medicine and aviation safety. His role in the project will focus on community based collections in order to research and transform artefacts and archives into narrative texts, visualisations, and display elements for Case Study 1: Air Memories and Case Study 2: Take-Off to Touchdown.
Dr Mitchell Whitelaw
Associate Professor Mitchell Whitelaw is a researcher and lecturer in the School of Art and Design in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra. His research spans practice and theory in the fields of digital design and culture; he works with data and computation as core materials in a creative research practice, and collaborates on applied, practice-led research with public outcomes. His theoretical work draws on and contextualises this practice, as well as investigating emerging concepts and forms in digital art and design. He will co-produce the project’s digital outcomes, with specific emphasis on data handling, linking and transformation. He will also contribute to Case Study 1: Air Memories, on geographic investigations, laying out investment in landing grounds, air routes and traffic patterns.
Dr Jane Ferguson
Dr Jane Ferguson is an anthropologist and lecturer in the School of Culture, History and Language in the College of Asia and Pacific at the Australian National University in Canberra. Her research interests include social and cultural anthropology, Asian cultural studies, air transportation and freight services, and historical studies. She will add an ethnographic perspective to the project, incorporating field research and interviews with employees of Southeast Asian and North American carriers that operate flights to Australia. She will also make use of archival materials in Bangkok, as well as records held by the SFO and the Pan Am archive at the University of Miami, integrating findings into Case Study 1: Air Memories and Case Study 3: An Ocean Apart?
Partner Investigators
Prudence Black • Paul Ashton • Brett Holman • Claire Marrison • Martha Sear • Jennifer Wilson • Roger Meyer • Phil Vabre • Sally Brockwell
Dr Prudence Black
Dr Prudence Black is a Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney and a Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide. She conducts research mainly into the areas of aviation cultures, modernism, fashion, dress and popular culture. For her part in the project, she will collect oral histories, focusing on passenger experiences on routes such as the Kangaroo Route (Sydney to London), Bird of Paradise (Sydney to PNG), and the Pan America Clipper Service to Australia; document vernacular design, technology and images (photographs, posters, films); research Indigenous involvement in regional aviation in Australia, and integrate her findings into Case Study 1: Air Memories and Case Study 3: An Ocean Apart?
Prof Paul Ashton
Professor Paul Ashton is an adjunct at the University of Technology Sydney –where he co-established the Australian Centre for Public History – at Macquarie University and at the University of Canberra. Co-founder and editor of the journal Public History Review, he has authored, co-authored and edited over thirty-seven books. These include a history of town planning in Sydney – The Accidental City– Once Upon a Time: Australian Writers on Using the Past and a history of Centennial Park. He is a member of the NSW Heritage Council’s Heritage Committee and has on a number of occasions been a judge for the NSW Premier’s History Awards. He was also a founder of the University of Technology Sydney’s community engagement program Shopfront and its Director for fifteen years.He will contribute to Case Study 1: Air Memories, by coordinating the oral history program, running oral history training workshops, and align the various components of the project to the mandatory Australian History Curriculum, in order to design and develop the digital education package for primary and secondary school students.
Dr Brett Holman
Dr Brett Holman is a researcher and lecturer in History in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England in Armidale. His research interests lie in ‘airmindedness’ and the aeroplane in British and Australian culture; the theory, anticipation and experience of aerial bombardment in Britain, c.1900 to 1945, particularly in the civilian and public sphere; aviation spectacle and aerial theatre in the modern period; and mystery aircraft scares in the early twentieth century. For this project, he will apply his theoretical frameworks for ‘airmindedness’ and related concepts such as aerial theatre, conducting historical and archival research for visualisations and interpretations of digitised collections for Case Study 1: Air Memories and Case Study 2: Take-Off to Touchdown.
Dr Claire Marrison
Dr Claire Marrison is the Standards and Systems Manager for Airservices Australia, one of the Partner Organisations of this project. In this role, she is responsible for the Operational and Work Health and Safety System, Quality Management System and the Environment Management System. The latter is the link to this project in that it places obligations on organisations to assure that heritage values are recognised and managed appropriately. She has initiated research on the heritage of Australian civil aviation and facilitates research on a wide range of related areas and factors crucial to continuous innovation and the environmentally and socially responsible management of Australian aviation safety. Her role in this project is to guide stakeholder and industry engagement and liaison, and work with the the researchers and Partner Organisations to ensure that research outcomes contribute positively to the development of operational and heritage policy for Airservices Australia in the future.
Dr Martha Sear
Dr Martha Sear is an historian and Senior Curator at the National Museum of Australia. Dr Sear will facilitate project access to NMA collections.
Miss Jennifer Wilson
Miss Jennifer Wilson is the Senior Curator of Transport, Energy and Science at the Queensland Museum, one of the Partner Organisations of this project. She is based at The Workshops Rail Museum in Ipswich. She has worked across a variety of transport histories in her previous roles as a curator at the National Museum of Australia from 2005 to 2017 and as curator of the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame and the Qantas Founders Museum in Longreach. Her research focuses on the connections between people, places and things, seeking to understand and record the stories of objects across time and space. For this project, she will collaborate on collections research, digital data sharing and exhibition development, integrating findings into Case Study 1: Air Memories and Case Study 3: An Ocean Apart?
Mr Roger Meyer
Since 1999, Mr Roger Meyer has been President of the Civil Aviation Historical Society (CAHS), which is based in Essendon at the Airways Museum, one of the Partner Organisations of this project. He has long experience with the Department of Transport from where he retired as a Middle Manager (Technical Specialist) after 39½ years’ service. He was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2006 Queen’s Birthday Honours “for service to the community through the preservation and recording of Australian civil aviation history”. Mr Meyer will facilitate project access to CAHS archives and the collections of the Airways Museum.
Mr Phil Vabre
Mr Phil Vabre is the Vice President of the Civil Aviation Historical Society & Airways Museum at Essendon airport, one of the Partner Organisations of this project. By profession he is an Air Traffic Controller, with a background in aviation human factors and safety management. He is also a private pilot and owner/custodian of a venerable Cessna that is older than he is. Phil is an amateur historian and is working on a book about Australia’s civil Empire flying boats and their bases. He will facilitate project access to the CAHS archives and the collections of the Airways Museum.
Dr Sally Brockwell
Dr Sally Brockwell is an ARC Research Associate attached to the Heritage of the Air Project in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. She is an archaeologist by training with research interests in the archaeology and cultural heritage of northern Australia and Island South East Asia. She will assist Associate Professor Ireland to coordinate project research activities and, together with Associate Professor Clarke, will investigate cultural material held in regional, national and international aviation collections.
Research Scholars
Anna Gebels • Ashley Harrison • Chris Holden • Jana Samargis-Woods • Fiona Shanahan • Jessica Western
Ms Anna Gebels
Anna Gebels is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Her research is focused on the collected heritage of the Empire Air Training Scheme in Australia in an attempt to ascertain what we have, and what we need in order to tell an inclusive account of the Scheme.
By day Anna is a museum curator and educator who has worked in quarantine, military aviation and medical museums. By night Anna enjoys singing for and with military veterans, transporting them to yesteryear with the sweet harmonies of the WWII era with her group Davey T and the Aces.
Ms Ashley Harrison
Ashley completed a Master of Liberal Arts (Visual Culture Research) (Research), after majoring in Undergraduate Anthropology and Psychology, at the Australian National University. For her sub-thesis, Ashley explored the historical and contemporary use of archival images of Aboriginal ancestors taken in the ‘William Henry Corkhill and the Tilba Tilba Collection’ (held at the National Library of Australia). As a Yuin woman with mixed heritage, Ashley is particularly interested in considering cross-cultural intersections and utilising Indigenous research methods. Ashley’s PhD project will focus on using archival collections, to find representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultural responses to aviation.
Mr Chris Holden
Chris Holden is a PhD student in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. His research interests include the role which Information Architecture plays in shaping the past within digital spaces, the Information Seeking Behaviours of historians and collection development of historical material. For the project he will explore the role of Information Architecture in developing sustainable online cultural resource collections, contributing to Case Study 2: Take-Off to Touchdown.
Ms Jana Samargis-Woods
Jana Samargis-Woods returned to Archaeology and Museum studies after working many years in the corporate sector. She completed a BA/BCom majoring in Archaeology and Economics at the University of Melbourne. Most recently she completed an MBA (2012) at Melbourne Business School. She also completed a Graduate Diploma in one of the earliest Museum Studies courses in 1993 at Deakin University. She has had three seasons of practical excavation experience working on an Early Bronze Age site at Marki in Cyprus with Latrobe University as a graduate student. Jana is currently an MA research candidate with the University of Sydney. She is thrilled to be returning to research and to be part of the Heritage of the Air project where she will be investigating aviation museum collections in Melbourne.
Ms Fiona Shanahan
Fiona Shanahan BA (Hons) is an aviation archaeologist based in Australia’s Top End. She was awarded a First Class Honours in 2014 for her research into aviation heritage management in Australia and the Marshall Islands. Since 2014 Fiona has continued researching Top End World War II aviation heritage, which has resulted in papers regarding the living history at aviation sites and one of the first definitions for aviation archaeology. As part of the Heritage of the Air team, Fiona will investigate the impact of civil aviation on Top End Communities.
Ms Jessica Western
Ms Jessica Western is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. Her research interests include questions of politicisation/depoliticisation and engagement in cultural heritage management, the distinctive relationship between air travel and intangible cultural elements, and the potential offered by digital interpretation techniques. She will work with the Queensland Museum’s aviation collections to establish a context for these through ethnographic and oral history research, as well as examining how digital heritage processes might broaden their cultural impact and contribute to an evolving multi-vocal heritage management practice.
Administration
Ms Emily Fry
Ms Emily Fry is a digital heritage student in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra, set to graduate at the end of 2018. She has previously worked alongside staff at the University and the Museum of Australian Democracy to design the transcription website for The Real Face of White Australia. She will be responsible for the design and maintenance of the project’s website.