Ceramic bowl and medication jar from the Psychiatric Services Collection
Image: Michelle McFarlane
Source: Museum Victoria
Two Museum Victoria collaborative research projects have received funding through the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Projects, announced on 28 May. One project will help preserve endangered amphibians, while the other will enrich an important Museum Victoria collection.
Dr Jane Melville will work with the University of Melbourne and the National Herbarium of Victoria to manage wetland habitats where housing developments encroach. The project, Optimal management of threatened amphibian metapopulations in urbanising landscapes, will examine the endangered Growling Grass Frog (Litoria raniformis) and will help conserve this beautiful animal and the biodiversity of its habitat. The recommendations that will result from the project will have increasing importance as Melbourne continues to grow.
Dr Nurin Veis will collaborate with researchers from the School of Historical Studies and the Faculty of VCA & Music at the University of Melbourne. Their project, entitled Reading the Objects: Developing Online Personal Stories from Australia's 'Museums of Madness', 1870-1980, will augment what is already known about the Psychiatric Services Collection.
This collection contains over 1,600 objects from Victorian mental health hospitals and is one of the largest of its type in the world. “We have sketchy information on [some] objects and surrounding stories,” says Nurin, who is the Senior Curator of Human Biology and Medicine. Her collaborators, Professor Elizabeth Malcolm and Dr Dolly MacKinnon, are notable historians of Australian psychiatry, and will research the background of the objects. “I have experience in medical science and museology but not history research – so it will be great to work with these experts in their fields,” Nurin adds. She will use the results of research to interpret the collection for public access online.