Keeping the flame of Purai alive: UoN’s Global Indigenous History Centre to celebrate a decade of seminal work in 2023

Thursday, 1 December 2022

The flame of Purai Global Indigenous History Centre will be kept alive in 2023 with the appointment of two new Directors, Dr Raymond Kelly and Professor Kate Senior.

2 head and shoulders shot of a man with a beard and a smiling woman together with a swirling colourful logo that is Purai's logo
Dr Raymond Kelly & Professor Kate Senior take on the Directorship of Purai Global Indigenous History Centre in 2023

Current Directors Emeritus Professor John Maynard and Professor Victoria Haskins will step down to pursue retirement and study leave respectively.

“John and I are very pleased to see Purai in such good hands and glad the centre will be able to enjoy its tenth year under their guidance,” Professor Haskins said.

“John and I will still be actively involved but it is heartening to have Kate and Ray’s presence there to keep the research of global and transnational analytical perspectives on Indigenous and diaspora histories and other related histories of race going,” she said.

Professor Haskins’ study leave involves a trip to India as part of a major research project, Ayahs and Amahs funded by the Australian Research Council, as well as taking up a Distinguished Visiting Scholar Fellowship at the Advanced Research Collaborative of the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY).

Apart from improving his handicap on the golf course, Professor Maynard will be working on a number of histories which include UNSW’s Nura Gili and the Indigenous Law Centre, Indigenous Australian boxers and a sequel to his much-acclaimed book, The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe.

Stepping into their large shoes will be Dr Raymond Kelly, Deputy Head of Wollotuka Institute and medical anthropologist, Professor Kate Senior.

As a Dhangatti and Gumbayngirr speaker, Dr Kelly’s research is centred on the recognition and revival of Indigenous languages.

Through his collaborative language research with multiple Indigenous communities across Australia, he has been able to make vital connections between different Aboriginal languages as part of his revitalisation work.

Dr Senior lives and breathes anthropology, having always been interested in culture and the myriad of ways people live their lives.

She perceives that remote Aboriginal communities are often framed by their deficits and her work aims to reframe this discourse and bring the strengths and resilience of Aboriginal communities into the public discourse, both through her writing, research and teaching.

Professor Senior, Dr Kelly and Professor Haskins have recently joined forces in a CHSF Pilot Research project designed to add to the collection of Indigenous histories through archival history.

From Ngukurr to Newcastle. Exploring the activism, impacts and legacy of Dexter Daniels aims to tell the story of a man who was not only instrumental in organising the 1966 Wave Hill walk-off, but whose participation in speaking tours and rallies for land rights across Australia and as far away as Bulgaria, was financially supported by the Newcastle Trades Unions.

In early 2022, Purai Global Indigenous History Centre moved from the Academic Division into the warm embrace of the University of Newcastle’s College of Human and Social Futures (CHSF), where most of their academics are based.

Since then it has gone from strength to strength.

With support from the college’s Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Fischetti, this move helped Purai build research capacity and developed strong research collaborations not only between CHSF and the Wollotuka Institute, but also across the university.

Apart from the From Ngukurr to Newcastle project, Purai is also responsible for instigating an exciting array of 2022 projects and events.

These include Looking Through Windows, a travelling multimedia exhibition which included talks, an elder’s gathering, weaving workshop and performance; an international  book launch with Purai affiliate, Dr Sachiyo Tsukamoto, whose work gives voice to the women behind one of the largest, government-sponsored human trafficking and sexual slavery scandals in modern history; and an online exhibition which brings to life the stories, memories and histories of the intrepid Indian and Chinese nursemaids who travelled the circuits of the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

More recently, the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre also organised the digitisation of incredibly important and rare original historical records from the former President of the Aboriginal Advancement Committee, Newcastle Trades Hall Council and relating to the Aboriginal rights movement in Newcastle (1960s-1980s) at the GlamX lab in the University’s Auchmuty library, The Stan Masterson Collection.

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