I have worked as a researcher for fifteen years and my interests range across women’s writing, environmental humanities, disability studies and science communication. I am motivated to uncover voices that have been written over, hidden, or neglected, and I write about these voices in both creative and critical publications. As well as two novels and a hybrid memoir, I have published in a range of high-ranking journals and co-edited a number of special issues. I have extensive experience in working with archives, have acquired approximately $550,000 in funding and have a successful track record in supervising and mentoring students and writers.
WORK IN PROGRESS
I am currently working on two books: an ecobiography of botanist Georgiana Molloy (1805-1843), Western Australia’s first female scientist, and the other-than-human beings with which she interacted (particularly plants), and a scholarly monograph on the genre of ecobiography. While a biography chronicles a person’s life, an ecobiography details how a person’s sense of self is shaped by their environment. The videos below outline some of my ideas and research on ecobiography.
Presentation on ecobiography at the Rachel Carson Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
Interview with Dr Prudence Gibson on my ecobiography of Georgiana Molloy and the importance of plant life, particularly in south-west Western Australia.
ARCHIVAL WORK
I am happiest in an archive, and have made significant historical finds. While working for Dr Fiona Paisley on her book about Indigenous man Anthony Martin Fernando, I uncovered three original notebooks by Fernando, written in 1927-28 when he lived on the streets in London. Two of these notebooks are now held in the National Museum, Canberra. In 2019, my archival research in the Battye Library, Perth, on the massacre of Wardandi Noongars instigated by Georgiana Molloy’s husband (subsequently published in JASAL) was used as corroborating data in the Colonial Massacres Map published by the Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia project at the University of Newcastle.
My research on Maud Praed, the deaf daughter of Rosa Praed, in the John Oxley Library, National Library of Australia and the Surrey History Centre revealed the extent of Maud’s deafness and the impact of eugenics on her life. I detailed this research in my hybrid memoir, Hearing Maud.
RESEARCH FUNDING
I have a strong track record in acquiring competitive funding, having amassed $548,515 to date from national and international funding bodies, including a prestigious Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from 2016-2019, which had a 16.4% success rate in 2016.
2020-2021: (with Dr Amanda Niehaus) Australia Council for the Arts, Resilience Grant for Science Write Now ($10,000)
2020 - 2020: stART Grant, Arts Queensland ($3,000)
2020 – 2020: The University of Edinburgh, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Environmental Humanities Fellowship ($2000)
2019 – 2020: Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society Fellowship ($40,000)
2019 - 2020: Griffith Review fellowship ($5,000)
2016 – 2017: The University of Queensland, Early Career Research Grant ($14,915)
2016 – 2018: Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) ($313,000)
2015: Australia Council for the Arts, New Work Grant ($15,600)
2014: Australia Council for the Arts, Artists with Disability Grant ($10,000)
2013: Arts Queensland, Individuals Fund Grant ($5,000)
2004 – 2007: The University of Melbourne, Sir Arthur Sims Travelling Scholarship ($90,000)
2006: University of London, Central Research Grant ($1,000)
2001 – 2003: University of Technology, Sydney (Australian Postgraduate Award ($40,000)
1999: The University of Wollongong Study Abroad Scholarship ($3,000)
1996 – 1998: The University of Wollongong Faculty of Creative Arts Scholarship ($9,000)
PUBLICATIONS
JOURNAL ARTICLES
‘From the Miniature to the Momentous: Writing Lives Through Ecobiography’. Auto/Biography Studies: Life Writing in the Anthropocene, 35.1 (2020) 13-33.
With Gillian Whitlock. ‘“Desperation for Life”: Writing Death in the Anthropocene.’ Auto/Biography Studies: Life Writing in the Anthropocene, 35.1 (2020) 231-235.
‘“So Many Sparks of Fire”: Dorothy Cottrell, Modernism and Mobility. Queensland Review. 23.2 (2016): 164-177.
‘Ghostliness and Un/Belonging as a Hard-of-Hearing Writer’. New Scholar. 3.1 (2014): 109-118.
‘Fluid Worlds: Reflecting Climate Change in The Swan Book and The Sunlit Zone.’ Southerly. 74.1 (2014): 142-163.
‘From the Miniature to the Momentous: Georgiana Molloy and the Craft of Collecting.’ Island. 135 (2013): 34-39.
‘“The one absolutely unselfish love”: Spiritualism and the Collaborative Writing of Rosa Praed and Nancy Harward’. Southerly. 70.2 (2010) 111-130.
‘Body Language’. M/C Journal. 13.3 (2010) .
‘“I Know, but Cannot Share It”: Landscape and the Emigrant’. Philament. 11 (2008).
‘Efflorescence: The Letters of Georgiana Molloy’. Hecate: A Women's Interdisciplinary Journal. 28.2 (2002): 176-190.
BOOK CHAPTERS
‘Uncertain Futures: Climate Fiction in Australian Literature.’ The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel. Ed. David Carter. Forthcoming, Cambridge UP, 2022.
‘“Silence is My Habitat”: Judith Wright, Writing and Deafness.’ The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature. Ed. Jessica Gildersleeve. Forthcoming, Routledge, 2021.
‘Shaping Spaces and Selves.’ Transcultural Ecocriticism: Indigenous, Romantic and Global Perspectives. Ed. Peter Denney and Stuart Cook. Forthcoming, Bloomsbury, 2021.
‘Gardening in the Anthropocene: Wilding, Eco-Memoir and Biodiversity’. The Politics and Poetics of Gardening in Hard Times. Lexington Books, 2019.
‘The Cry of the Gull’. Disability Experiences. Ed. Susannah Mintz and Tom Couser. Gale, 2019, pp. 142-145.
‘I felt this landscape knew I was there’: The Lake’s Apprentice and Ecobiography.’ Offshoot: Contemporary Life Writing Methodologies and Practice. Ed. Donna Lee Brien and Quinn Eades. UWA Publishing, 2018.
‘Eco-Memoir: Protecting, Restoring and Repairing Memory and Environment.’ Mediating Memory: Tracing the Limits of Memoir. Ed. Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles and Sue Joseph. Routledge, 2017.
‘‘The Inexhaustible Properties of a Lady’s Pen’: The Literary Craft of Georgiana Molloy’. Claiming Space for Australian Women's Writing. Ed. Devaleena Das and Sanjukta Dasgupta. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50400-1_10
‘Inscribing Landscapes in Patrick White’s Novels.’ In Patrick White Centenary: The Legacy of a Prodigal Son. Ed. Cynthia vanden Driesen and Bill Ashcroft. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
‘Intimacy and Distance across the Globe: The Literary Relationship between Georgiana Molloy and Captain James Mangles.’ In Intimate Explorations: Reading Across Disciplines. Ed. Alejandro Cervantes-Carson and Beatriz Oria. Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009.
EDITED ISSUES
With Amanda Tink. ‘Writing Disability in Australia.’ Australian Literary Studies. Forthcoming August 2021.
With Gillian Whitlock. ‘Life Writing in the Anthropocene.’ a/b: AutoBiography Studies, 35.1, 2020.
REVIEWS
‘Diane Comer, The Braided River: Migration and the Personal Essay.’ Forthcoming, Text Journal, 24.2, 2020.
‘Cathy Perkins, The Shelf Life of Zora Cross.’ Forthcoming, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature.
‘Melissa Fagan, What Will be Worn: a McWhirters Story.’ Queensland Review, 26.1, 2019, 188-190.
‘Nadia Buick and Madeleine King (eds), Remotely Fashionable: a Story of Subtropical Style, Brisbane: the fashion archives.’ Queensland Review, 23.2, 2016, 272-273.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
KEYNOTE LECTURES
‘Judith Wright, Poetry and Perception in the Anthropocene.’ In the Making: A Symposium on Poetry and Poetics, University of New England, 29th November 2019.
INVITED PUBLIC LECTURES
‘Rosa Praed, Maud Praed and Deafness’. The Retrospect: A Symposium on Australian Women Writers, State Library of NSW, Sydney, 12th October 2016.
‘Deafness and Writing.’ Australian and New Zealand Conference for the Education of the Deaf, Brisbane, 5th July 2013.
INVITED PRESENTATIONS
‘Negotiating Science and Gender in 19th Century South-West Western Australia.’ ‘On Gender’ Seminar, The University of Queensland, 4th October 2019.
‘Citation Deep Dive.’ Panel on citations and research development. School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland, 9th August 2019.
‘Georgiana Molloy, Science and Writing.’ Continuing Professional Development Seminar, The Empirical Imaginary and the History of Science: Women’s Art and Writing in the 19th Century, ARC Centre of Excellence for History of Emotions, University of Queensland, 6th June 2018.
‘Deconstructing the Proposal.’ Humanities and Social Sciences ARC Incubator Program, The University of Queensland, 27th October 2016.
‘Vernacular Criticism and the Book Blogging Phenomenon.’ Amateur Knowledges Workshop, University of Wollongong, 6th July 2015.