11am, 13th September 2023
Burwood: C2.05.01
Waurn Ponds: IC2.108
Zoom link here.

Archive of the Archivist: Phyllis Mander-Jones and Australian Pacific History, 1901-1957.

Much historiographical analysis is concerned with how historians approach ‘the archives’, especially how documents are curated, maintained and accessed through the policies and procedures of a particular institution. Less has been written of the people functioning at an individual level, employees like Phyllis Mander-Jones, who developed the foundations of Australia’s archival profession.  In this seminar, Dr Deborah Lee-Talbot discusses some highlights from her research project, Archive of the Archivist: Phyllis Mander-Jones and Australian Pacific History, 1901-1957. Doing so, she considers how women like Mander-Jones were crucial contributors to the policies and procedures of archives and record-keeping in modern Australian libraries.

Deborah is a professional and academic historian fascinated by religion, gender, archives, libraries and community engagement. With financial support from a scholarship at Deakin University, these interests were expressed in her PhD thesis ‘Kaleidoscopic Archives: finding hidden histories in the Pacific Records of the Australian Joint Copying Project’. This year she is conducting research at the State Library of New South Wales as CH Currey Fellow with the project the ‘Archives of the Archivist: Phyllis Mander-Jones and the Keeping of Australian-Pacific records, 1896-1957. She received a National Library of Australia Summer Scholarship in 2022 to analyse records concerning the Australian Joint Copying Project. Her research paper regarding women’s leadership in Pacific missions was highly commended at the Pacific Historians Association conference in 2021.