Research Network The Future of Madness
Structure
The Future of Madness network will operate as a collective of scholars sharing a common purpose including professorial, lecturer and senior lecturers, HDR students and research fellows. It will be led by Professor Catharine Coleborne from 2020 and evolve to build capacity and leadership. The first event was a Roundtable in June 2019: Histories of Mental Health, Institutions, Spaces and Places of Care. This event showcased 8 sessions with individual research presentations, discussions about intersecting research interests, methodologies, and plans, and determined the Network’s foci and identity.
Professor Catharine Coleborne
Professor Coleborne is an internationally recognised historian of health and medicine with an extensive portfolio of research, teaching, administration and academic leadership. Her research and publishing in the histories of mental health, families, illness, colonial worlds and medical institutions, as well as in law and history, has attracted world-wide attention.
Dr Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen
Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen is an ARC DECRA Fellow whose research focuses on the cultural and social histories of warfare in the modern world and, increasingly, the broader history of psychiatry, psychiatric patients and treatment regimes.
Dr Effie Karageorgos
Effie's research is in the social history of war, focusing on military psychiatry and soldiering during the South African and Vietnam Wars. She has a PhD from Flinders University, and her monograph is entitled Australian Soldiers in South Africa and Vietnam: Words from the Battlefield (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).
Dr James Dunk
Dr Dunk is an historian of medicine and colonialism. His research is at the juncture between political, cultural, and intellectual history, exploring the ways that mental illness, especially, reveals the history of societies.
Dr Robyn Dunlop
Robyn Dunlop is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Newcastle. This is her second doctorate; her first examined ethics and affect in Australian research on cultural difference and traumatic pasts (University of Adelaide; 2003). Robyn's current research focuses on the history of mid-twentieth century psychiatric services, with a special interest in Newcastle (1960s-1980s).
Dr Rebecca Mclaughlan
An expert in architectural design and theory, Dr Rebecca McLaughlan’s research explores the relationship between our built environment and mental health. This includes how architecture had a direct impact on the experience of institutionalised mental health care (1878-1970), and how innovation in the design of contemporary forensic mental healthcare settings could support advances in patient care and public expectations. Her work also explores how architecture can support mental wellbeing in general hospital settings, particularly paediatric, oncology and palliative care – three settings where the emotional and psychological needs of the family unit are as important as those of the patient.
Dr Ann Hardy
As a Historian and Co-ordinator of the GLAMx Digitisation Lab, Ann has a strong commitment to historical and archival research of the Hunter region, collaborating with communities and cultural groups to develop new knowledge. Her key research areas Australian Asylum History, Australian Cultural Heritage, Digital Humanities GLAM sector, and Heritage & Well-Being.
Catherine Kenny
Catherine Kenny is one of two PhD students under an international ARC grant investigating the effects of solitary confinement on life course, through the University of Newcastle and the University of Tasmania. Her research areas include insanity, madness, punishment, colonial Australia and solitary confinement. She is the author of Captives: Australian Army Nurses in Japanese Prison Camps (WW2), published by University of Queensland Press.
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.