Norman McCann and Seymour Summer Scholarships
The 2008 Summer Scholars
Photo courtesy Loui Seselja, National Library
Each year the National Library offers Summer Scholarships to young Australian postgraduate students to enable them to undertake research based on the National Library’s collections. The three annual Norman McCann Summer Scholarships are generously funded by Mrs Pat McCann in memory of her late husband, a former member of the National Library Council. In 2007 Dr John and Dr Heather Seymour generously donated money to fund a summer scholarship supporting research, preferably in biography. This has enabled the Library to offer a fourth scholarship from 2008, the Seymour Summer Scholarship. This year’s Summer Scholars are Sophie Loy-Wilson, Andrew Thackrah, Rebecca Saunders and Alexander Cameron-Smith.
Sophie Loy-Wilson has just completed the first year of her PhD in History at the University of Sydney, where she received her BA (Hons) in History in 2006. Sophie’s research topic is on Sydney and Shanghai as ‘cosmopolitan capitals’ from 1900 to 1940. She will be using personal papers, oral history interviews, advertising ephemera, manuscripts and business periodicals. Sophie reads Mandarin and intends to take advantage of the National Library’s collection of Chinese language sources to enrich the history of Australia’s engagement with Asia. Her aim is to use the collections to understand Australian national identity and the relationships between Australia and Asia.
Andrew Thackrah is a second-year PhD candidate in History at the University of Western Australia. He completed a BA (Hons) and LLB (Hons) at UWA in 2006. Andrew’s topic is the history of neo-liberal thought in Australia. The key question that his research will focus upon is whether there is a distinct Australian neo-liberalism, or whether neo-liberalism is better characterised as a transnational philosophy. Andrew will be using a range of published and unpublished resources, focusing, in particular, on the very substantial archival records of the Institute for Public Affairs.
Rebecca Saunders is in the first year of her PhD in History at the University of Melbourne, where she completed a BA (Hons) in 2006. Rebecca is researching the history of Churchill Island, in Western Port Bay, Victoria. Her thesis will focus on the way the landscape of Churchill Island has been used and understood by owners and visitors for pleasure, for economic activities, as a home and as a tourist attraction. Rebecca will examine early European activities in Western Port Bay and Churchill Island from 1798 to 1850, based on sailors’ and settlers’ logbooks and diaries, as well as the Library’s rich cartographic and pictorial collections.
Alexander Cameron-Smith is a first year PhD student in History at the University of Sydney and has a BSc and BA (Hons) from Sydney. Alexander is undertaking a biographical study of the tropical health pioneer Sir Raphael Cilento, to consider broader historical trends in public health and colonial administration. As well as Cilento’s medical reforms in Australia, Alexander will explore his work in Malaya and New Guinea, with the League of Nations in the interwar period and thereafter, the United Nations. The Library’s collections include not only Cilento’s personal papers and oral history interviews with him and his medico wife, Lady Phyllis, but also the papers of his colleagues J.H.L. Cumpston, E.W.P. Chinnery, and several other key colonial administrators in the period.
Gianoula Burns
Manager, Divisional Support Unit
Collections Management and Australian Collections and Reader Services