Current whereabouts: Home > Research Centre > Committee
Research Centre
Research Centre
craft + design enquiry
Reports
The Research Centre Committee
10 August 2009
The Research Centre committee members are drawn from a national craft and design network and are experts in their chosen fields. Members are appointed for a term of 2 years with an optional 2 year reappointment. The committee meets bi-monthly and advises on strategies for the growth and management of the Research Centre.
- Dr Louise Hamby
- Louise Hamby is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Research School of Humanities at The Australian National University. Her research is principally focussed on Arnhem Land material culture, historic and contemporary. Investigating the role of Indigenous people in the formation of collections from eastern Arnhem Land from the turn of the century until recent times is the topic of her current Australian Research Council. Most recently she has curated the exhibition Twined Together:Kunmadj Njalehenjaleken and was the editor of the book of the same name.
- Dr Kevin Murray
- Dr Kevin Murray is an independent writer and curator. For the past eight years, he has been Director of Craft Victoria, where he initiated a number of programs, including the Melbourne Scarf Festival and the South Project, a four year program of cultural exchange across the south that involved international gatherings in Melbourne, Wellington, Santiago and Johannesburg. For an archive of exhibitions and texts, visit Kitezh. This also contains a platform for new ideas in craft, and a journey through the various Souths of the world.
- Dr Patsy Hely
- Patsy Hely is an academic and artist working in the field of ceramics. Her work is held in many national public collections and she has exhibited widely in Australia and in a number of countries internationally. Her work has its roots in the domestic arena though it often encompasses a variety of media and frequently involves the use of found objects, often in reinvented form. As an academic, she has worked at a number of institutions, including Sydney University Tin Sheds, COFA and Southern Cross University. Currently, she is employed at the ANU School of Art as Convenor of the Honours programme. She was awarded a doctorate in 2007.
- Anne Brennan
- Anne Brennan is an artist and writer and the head of the Art Theory Workshop of the ANU School of Art. A founding member of Gray Street Workshop, she has written extensively on the visual arts, craft and design. Her research interests encompass the ways in which private and public memory coalesce in institutions such as the memorial and the archive. She has undertaken a number of projects in archives and museums, including Secure the Shadow at the Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, with Anne Ferran in 1995 and Archives and the Everyday at the Australian War Memorial in 1996. She is currently engaged in a writing project about memory and place.
- Avi Amesbury
- Avi Amesbury is the Executive Director of Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre. The Centre supports contemporary craft artists and designers through membership, exhibitions and programs. Previously she was the Manager for Program Development and Communications with the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the national peak advocacy group for the humanities, arts and social sciences in Australia. She worked at Craft Australia for 6 years and during this time led the development of the Craft Australia Research Centre. Avi Amesbury is a practicing ceramic artist exhibiting nationally and internationally.
- Dr. Peter McNeil
- Dr. Peter McNeil is Professor of Design History at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, and Foundation Chair of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research has engaged with ways in which visual imagery and materiality shaped lives from the eighteenth century to the present day and he researches questions of representation, consumption and social identity. His Masters thesis was an examination of women and design culture in inter-war Sydney and his PhD examined connections between 18th-century English portrait painting and the material culture of clothing. His co-edited anthologies are Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers (Berg, 2006); Fashion in Fiction and The Men's Fashion Reader (also Berg, 2009). In 2009 he published a four-volume work entitled Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources from the Late Middle Ages to Today (Berg) and in 2010 he will co-publish Fashion: A Global History with G. Riello (Routledge). McNeil is a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Design History and Fashion Theory; he is Book Reviews Editor for the latter.
