2023 Fellows announced

Each year, Library Fellows help uncover new stories and offer fresh insights into our extensive collections. Our Fellows’ research projects this year demonstrate the breadth and depth of the Library’s collections and the research interests we can support. 

Our Fellowship program is generously supported by significant private benefactors, and we gratefully acknowledge their support. 

CH Currey Fellowship — Ms Deborah Lee-Talbot, for her project: The Archive of the archivist: Phyllis Mander-Jones and Australian-Pacific History, 1901–1957. This project will focus on the Library’s 20th-century archives documenting Australians in the Pacific. 

Nancy Keesing Fellowship — Dr Monique Rooney, for her project: A Window of Life: Ruth Park, a Biography. This project is the first literary biography of author Ruth Park and will draw on the rich archival holdings at the State Library of NSW to understand and preserve the legacy of a writer. 

David Scott Mitchell Fellowship — Dr Effie Karageorgos, for her project: Anti-Vietnam War protest in NSW. This project will focus on Australian histories of the anti-Vietnam War protest movement and what it tells us about the social and political atmosphere in the state during the 1960s and 1970s. 

Merewether Fellowship — Emeritus Professor Martyn Lyons, for his project: Reading in Nineteenth-Century Australia: the autobiographical sources. This project of Australian reading will explore readers and their responses to what they read in their own autobiographical writings as a way to ‘interrogate the audience’. 

Hertzberg Fellowship — Dr Peter Gibson, for his project: New South Wales’ First Industrial Law: The Factories and Shops Act, 1896–1912. This project will be the first dedicated historical investigation into one of the most significant pieces of industrial legislation in Australian history, and the first in NSW. 

Australian Religious History Fellowship — Dr Patricia Curthoys, for her project: Anglican White Female: A Study of Rose Selwyn. The project will explore colonial Anglicanism in NSW through a study of the life of Rose Elizabeth Selwyn, through her archive in the Library and her appearances in the colonial press. 

Ross Steele AM Fellowship — Emeritus Professor Penny Russell, for her project: John Rae’s Sydney: art in context. This project will explore John Rae (1813–1900) and his watercolour sketches of Sydney, to better understand the architecture and appearance of the city in the early days of the colony. 

Applications for all Fellowships for 2024 — including the biennial Coral Thomas Fellowship — will open on Monday 15 May 2023. 

Read about the Library's Fellows and Residents program.