Collection and Research projects
Moya is participating as a partner investigator in an Australian Research Council funded project Using museums to counter racism and increase acceptance of diversity among young people with Deakin University and the University of Melbourne, 2012-2015. This project will reveal how high school students and their teachers understand racism, diversity and identity. It will also determine how museum programs can reduce racism and increase acceptance of diversity among high school students and their teachers, with particular reference to the Immigration Museum’s Identity: yours, mine, ours exhibition. Moya delivered a paper at the Socially Purposeful Museum conference in Taiwan in late 2012 about the exhibition and this project entitled: ‘Exhibiting Difference/Talking Difference/Making a Difference: Melbourne’s Immigration Museum’.
Moya is currently working on a number of new acquisitions for the collection, including an important collection of 1960s material relating to the Bring Out a Briton campaign; a large collection of objects, documents and photographs representing the experiences of an Australian UN worker in post World War II devastated Europe; and a stunning collection of equipment, textiles and documents relating to the early 20th century migration and settlement experiences of a doctor and his wife from Greece. Moya is working with students and volunteers on developing research about these collections, as well as forging collaborations with current postgraduate, migration-related research such as Museum Victoria research associate Mia Spizzica’s work on Italian World War II internees in Australia.
>Exhibitions
Moya's most recent achievement was as lead curator on the development of the watershed exhibition at the Immigration Museum Identity: yours, mine, ours and the associated website. She co-convened the related cross-agency symposium Racism: can we talk? at the Immigration Museum in 2012 [proceedings published in 2013]. Moya also co-curated with guest curator Christine Eid a display at the Immigration Museum about the Eid brothers, migrants from Lebanon who drove taxis in Melbourne during the 1970s-1980s which opened in 2012. Both the exhibitions are on long-term display.