And now …

 Meet Professor Catharine Coleborne, the new manager and Head of School, School of Humanities and Social Science, at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

I have taken the following information about Professor Catharine Coleborne from her staff profile on the University of Newcastle, Australia, webpage:

Professor Catherine 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.”

Professor Colborne’s research interests are: Narratives of Mental Health; Regulating Colonial Mobility in Australasia.” Her experise is in: “History of mental health services; institutional closures; general medical topics especially in historical contexts; Australian history; contemporary Australian and New Zealand views of their histories and national identity; gender, law and social and cultural histories, histories of the family; digital history.”

Professor Coleborne holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours), and a Master of Arts (History) from the University of Melbourne, and a PhD from La Trobe University in Melbourne. She completed her PhD, “Reading Madness”, on gender and nineteenth-century colonial institutional confinement for the mentally ill in Victoria, at La Trobe University, Melbourne, in 1998.

In 1999 Professor Coleborne was appointed to the University of Waikato, New Zealand as first a lecturer, then an Associate Professor, then Professor in the University’s School of Social Sciences. During her time at the University of Waikato, Catherine performed in a number of key academic, administration and leadership roles such as, for instance, Chairperson, Department of History, and Associate Dean Graduate and Postgraduate.  Other of her professional appointments at the University of Waikato also included: Performance Based Research Fund Coordinator, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (1.1.2014-31.12.2014); : Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, (1.1.2012-31.1.2015).

The direct link to Professor Catharine Coleborn’s staff profile on the University of Newcastle, Australia, webpage is:

http://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/catharine-colborne

In her staff profile for the University of Newcastle, Catharine Coleborne speaks about her academic leadership experience: “I have performed a number of key roles in academic administration and leadership since my appointment at the University of Waikato. Until January 2015, I was a member of the faculty’s Executive Management Group by virtue of my appointment as Associate Dean Graduate and Postgraduate from mid-2012. In 2014 I was appointed as the faculty’s PBRF Coordinator and between September and December 2014, I ran a Formative Research Exercise for the Faculty with 106 staff participating which involved coordinating the FRE advice, running training workshops, devising assessment criteria and steering the assessment panel of four in the faculty, and preparing the final advice to staff in a team, and the final report to the Deputy Vice Chancellor. I have also been active in the university on specific committees including appointments committees, the University’s Postgraduate Research Committee, the Research Committee, a PBRF working group.”

Her University of Newcastle staff profile reveals that Professor Coleborne “has also been an active contributor to community mental health projects that have involved postgraduate students in publishing and research, such as a project focused on mental health histories in the Waikato. This culminated in awards for the students and a publication: Changing Times, Changing Places: From Tokanui to Mental Health Services in the Waikato, 1910-2012 (Hamilton: HalfCourt Press, 2012).”

“She has an outstanding record of research and scholarly activity, including three sole-authored books, more than six edited collections, and a range of book chapters and refereed journal articles. Professor Coleborne has also twice attracted grant funding from New Zealand’s Marsden Fund (Royal Society of New Zealand). Her new book, Insanity, Identity and Empire, will be published by Manchester University Press in October 2015.”

Now, after 16 years at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, Professor Catharine Coleborne has returned to Australia to take up her new appointment  as the manager of the School of Humanities and Social Science (a newly created position as such,) and Head of School, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, Australia. Catharine Coleborne says she is looking forward to working with School and University staff to move the School of Humanities and Social Sciences into a position of great strength nationally and internationally, making it a destination of choice for postgraduates and postdoctoral scholars.

About her new role at the University of Newcastle Australia, Catharine Coleborne also says: “Humanities and Social Sciences need to be present in the whole university– called upon to be part of research priority areas, invited to be part of external funding applications/bids and research collaborations, and blazing a trail in terms of relevant engagement with research.” : “By placing increasing emphasis on collaboration and team research, but without ‘a one-size fits all’ approach, I aim to achieve excellence in research and postgraduate research outcomes.”

Speaking from my own role as a Conjoint Fellow to the Faculty of Education and the Arts, in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia, I can say that I have personal experience of Catharine’s drive, and that she does indeed support and encourage the staff.  I find Catharine to be a very pleasant person and a born leader; she is friendly, exceedingly easy to talk to,  generous with her time,  and willing to assist staff to achieve their goals. Speaking personally, I am very honoured, and feel both humbled and proud, that Catharine requested that I write a piece entitled “Highlights from a Conjoint Scholar” to be included in her School editorial. I am further honoured and feel humbled that Catharine also supported me in my efforts to post a call-for-papers (cfp) for my proposed book, an edited collection, with the working title Representations of the Mother-in-Law: in (popular/ social culture) British/ American/ Australian/ and European literature, film, and television. Not only did Professor Coleborne promote my proposed venture by having my cfp for this proposed book featured on the University of Newcastle, Australia, webpage, she  had it attached to my University staff profile, and she has also spoken to her contacts in New Zealand about this proposed book. As well, I am absolutely delighted and feel very, very honoured that Professor Catharine Coleborne is supporting me my 2 current book projects, the edited collated works, Representations of the Mother-in-Law, and New and Unusual Ways of Writing Lives, and, despite her own heavy workload, has accepted the invitation to be a reader-reviewer for these works.

Professor Coleborne has supervised 18 Research Higher Degree thesis and dissertations to completion, and is currently supervising a further 5, and has an outstanding record of research and scholarly activity, including three sole-authored books, more than six edited collections, and a range of book chapters and refereed journal articles. Her lengthy list of publications include 11 Book Chapters; 48 Journal Articles; 37 Reviews; 53 Conferences; and other works including 20 reports, 2 thesis, and 1 dissertation. As well, Catherine currently has publications that are in press, and still others that are as yet unpublished.

Professor Coleborne has also been an active contributor to community mental health projects that have involved postgraduate students in publishing and research, such as a project focused on mental health histories in the Waikato.  This culminated in awards for the students and a publication: Changing Times, Changing Places: From Tokanui to Mental Health Services in the Waikato, 1910-2012. Hamilton: HalfCourt Press (2012).

Professor Coleborne has won a number of awards and grants for her work, and has also twice attracted grant funding from New Zealand’s Marsden Fund (Royal Society of New Zealand).

Distinctions

• Recipient of a Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) Stipendiary Award, Lancaster University, UK, 2015
• Member of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Panel (Humanities) for three years, 2013*
• Member of Selection Committee, Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship (2010-the present)
• Tertiary Education Commission, Appointed as a Specialist Adviser to the Humanities and Law Panel for the PBRF (2011 for 2012)
• President, New Zealand Historical Association (2009-2011)
• President, Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society (2008-2010)
• Appointed to the Tertiary Education Commission’s PBRF Sector Reference Group (2009-2010)
• Marsden Standard Research Grant, Royal Society of New Zealand (with Professor Angela McCarthy at Otago University, UOO-167-SOC): ‘Migration, ethnicity and insanity: New Zealand and Australia, 1860-1910’ (2009-2011).
• Recipient of a Harold White Stipendiary Research Fellowship, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, for a three-month period during 2007-2008 (awarded 2006)
• Recipient of a Fast Start Marsden Research Grant, Royal Society of New Zealand, for her project Family strategies involving ‘madness’ in colonial Australia and New Zealand, 1860-1914 (2003, for 2004-2006)

Featured Publications

• Catharine Coleborne and Ondine Godtschalk, ‘Colonial families and cultures of health: Glimpses of illness and domestic medicine in private records in New Zealand and Australia, 1850-1910’, Journal of Family History, 38, 4, October 2013, pp. 403-221, DOI 10.1177/0363199013506165
• Catharine Coleborne, ‘Insanity, gender and empire: women living a “loose kind of life” on the colonial institutional margins, 1870-1910’, Health and History 14:1 (2012), pp. 77-99.
• Catharine Coleborne, ‘Regulating ‘mobility’ and masculinity through institutions in colonial Victoria, 1870s – 1890s’, Law, Text, Culture 15 (December 2011), pp. 45-71.
• Catharine Coleborne and Elaine Bliss, ‘Emotions, Digital Tools and Public Histories: Digital Storytelling using Windows Movie Maker in the History Tertiary Classroom’, History Compass, 9 (2011), pp. 1–12.

Books

• ‘Madness’ in the family: Insanity and institutions in the Australasian colonial world 1860s-1914 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
• Reading ‘Madness’: Gender and difference in the colonial asylum in Victoria, Australia, 1848-1880s (Perth, Western Australia: API Network and Curtin University Australia Research Centre, 2007).
• N.B. Catharine’s new book, Insanity, Identity and Empire, was published by Manchester University Press in October 2015.

Edited Books

• Catharine Coleborne and the Waikato Mental Health Research Group (eds), Changing Times, Changing Places: From Tokanui to Mental Health Services in the Waikato, 1910-2012 (Hamilton: HalfCourt Press, 2012)
• Angela McCarthy and Catharine Coleborne (eds) Migration, Ethnicity, and Mental Health: International Perspectives, 1840-2010 (London and New York: Routledge, 2012)
• Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon (eds) Exhibiting Madness in Museums: Remembering Psychiatry through Collections and Display (London and New York: Routledge, 2011)
• Diane Kirkby and Catharine Coleborne (eds) Law, History, Colonialism: The reach of empire (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 307. Re-released in paperback version.
• Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon (eds), ‘Madness’ in Australia: Histories, heritage and the asylum (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press/API Network, 2003), pp. 269.
• Diane Kirkby and Catharine Coleborne (eds), Law, History, Colonialism: The reach of empire (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 307.

Recent Publications

• Catharine Coleborne . Insanity, Identity and Empire: Colonial institutional confinement in Australia and New Zealand, 1870-1910. Manchester University Press (2015).
• Katie Pickles and Catharine Coleborne (eds), New Zealand’s Empire. Manchester University Press (2015).

Editorial Roles

• Australian Historical Studies, Co-editor (with AP Hans Pols, University of Sydney),
• Health and History, Editorial Board (to end of 2013) Social History of Medicine
• History of Psychiatry, Editorial Board