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Making Public Histories: Recording Everyday Life and Writing for History - Melbourne

Published: 18 March 2009

Recording Everyday Life and ‘Writing for History’: Mass Observation in Britain and Australia

How have pioneering approaches to recording everyday lives generated innovative and influential public histories?

From the late 1930s until the early 1950s (and since 1981) the social research organisation, Mass Observation recruited writers from all over the UK to create an anthropology of everyday life and a unique public history. Dorothy Sheridan (MO Archive Development Director and Honorary Professor at Sussex University) will consider some of the issues it now raises in the digital age. Professor Kate Darian-Smith (University of Melbourne) will reflect on Australian equivalents to MO, including the Prest Social Survey conducted in Melbourne during 1941-3.

This series is offered jointly by the Monash University Institute for Public History, History Council of Victoria and State Library of Victoria.

Admission free. All welcome. Bookings required.

Bookings: +61 3 8664 7099, email bookings@slv.vic.gov.au or visit the State Library of Victoria website for online bookings.

Time: 5.30 to 7.30 pm
Date: Thursday 19 March, 2009
Venue: Village Roadshow Theatrette, State Library of Victoria

For further information contact:
Name: Kerrie Alexander
Telephone: +61 3 9902 0116
Email: kerrie.alexander@arts.monash.edu.au
Website: Making Public Histories Seminar Series (pdf, 36kb).