Bulletin

Issue: May 2004

People

Eureka's Women

Dr Clare Wright takes up federal research grant at La Trobe University

Award-winning historian, Dr Clare Wright, has taken up a three-year federal grant as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the History Department at La Trobe University.

Dr Wright has left her previous position as the Executive Officer of the History Council of Victoria to commence her new research project, funded by the Australian Research Council. Her project, Eureka's Women: An Intimate History of Sex, Class and Culture on the Victorian Goldfields, will be the first systematic study of the role of women in the Eureka Stockade.

'It is appropriate that this important study should commence in 2004 - the 150th anniversary of the Eureka uprising,' says Dr Wright.

'This year will be the occasion for commemorations and speech-making about the legacy of Eureka for our national identity. This sort of talk tends to emphasise the masculine nature of the struggle: male passions inflamed, male blood shed, manhood suffrage won. But it is important to remember that 3,500 women were living in Ballarat in 1854 and these women's hopes, fears and actions are part of the Eureka story too.'

It is not the first time that Dr Wright has provided a female perspective on a seemingly male domain. Her national award-winning doctoral thesis - the topic of her first book Beyond the Ladies Lounge (MUP 2003) - is a history of female publicans in Australia. The book won popular and critical acclaim for its revelation that Australian pubs have largely been run by women.

Dr Wright - who holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and an MA from Monash University - is committed to raising the public profile of history. She presents a regular radio history segment on 774 ABC Melbourne's Evening Program and can be seen as a member of the Brains Trust on ABC TV's The Einstein Factor.

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