Suitcases, Boats and Bridges: Telling migrant stories in Australian museums
Principal Investiagtor: Dr Nina Parish
Research Team: Dr Chiara O’Reilly (Museum Studies, University of Sydney)
Funder: EUOSSIC, Erasmus Mundus / University of Bath International Researcher Mobility Award / School of Letters Arts and Media Research Support Award, University of Sydney
Amount: Erasmus Mundus (€7,500) / International Researcher Mobility Award (£5,000) / University of Sydney ($2,500)
Duration: July 2012 – August 2013
Project rationale and aims
This research project seeks to investigate how migrant stories are being collected and told in Australian museums, ranging from large institutions with governmental support to smaller regional and suburban, and sometimes volunteer-run, museums.
Through a series of interviews and a workshop organised at the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) on 2 August 2013, it has brought together academics and museum professionals to discuss multiculturalism and museums.
Research questions
- What role has multiculturalism played historically in Australia?
- What is the current state of multiculturalism in Australia?
- How has immigration traditionally been represented within collections and exhibitions in Australian museums?
- What is the role of the community gallery today?
- Are migrant stories more effectively represented when they are articulated in a community‐specific or intercultural way?
- How do new technologies contribute to telling migrant stories?
- Do volunteer-run museums still have a role to play?
- How are objects and collections being used?
- Who is coming to see these exhibitions?
- What do Australian museums have to teach their European counterparts?
- What are the projects and challenges for the future?
A follow-up workshop, funded by the Memory, History and Identity cluster was organised in November 2013 at the University of Bath, retaining the same mixture of academics and museum practitioners. Kim Tao, Curator for Post-Federation Immigration at the ANMM, who spoke in Bath in November, writes about the August workshop on the museum’s blog.
The research team also contributed a guest post about community galleries to the Hurstville City Library, Museum & Gallery blog in September 2013.
The next steps of this project are the completion of two joint-authored articles on the role of the community gallery and objects in telling migrant stories (working with Dr Chiara O’Reilly).
