Humanities and Social Sciences

Media Studies Program

Staff Directory

Rachel Buchanan is a journalist and historian whose writing has been published in newspapers, magazines, books, academic and literary journals in Australia and New Zealand.

Trained as a reporter in New Zealand , between 1993 and 2002 she was on staff at The Age newspaper, working as a sub-editor, reporter, feature writer, opinion writer and columnist.

Between February 2005 and October 2006, she wrote a weekly column for The Age's Metro section. She has also written the View From The Couch column on film and popular culture for Fairfax's Good Weekend magazine (2000-2005) and the Naked City column for Insight, The Age's weekly news review section (2004-2005). Her stories, reviews and essays have also appeared in Meanjin, Arena Magazine and Australian Book Review .

In 2001, Rachel graduated with a BA (Hons) in history from Monash University writing a thesis about Melbourne 's 1956 Olympic Hostesses. Her doctorate examined how Maori and Pakeha have made history about Parihaka, a pioneering pan-tribal community founded by two pacifist Maori prophets in the mid-nineteenth century. Her thesis is the basis for a book, 'The Dementia Wing of History', that she is now writing for Huia Publishing. The book is about history, family and memeory and the many forgotten stories in New Zealand's past and present.

Rachel is also researching how online journalism is changing newspapers, a project that involves interviews with staff working for The Age newspaper and its online companion. 'Black and white and all over?' an essay exploring the future and past of newspapers, was published in The Age Insight section, 25 August 2007. She is interested in archives of all kinds and the stories they contain. One such story is that of a Melbourne POW Lofty Cannon and his friendship with British artist Ronald Searle, the basis for a recent essay in Griffith Review.

Academic Publications:

'Remembering a forgotten survivor', Griffith Review, summer 2007-08 (Griffith University and ABC Books) 157-168.

'Decolonizing the Archives: the work of New Zealand 's Waitangi Tribunal', Public History Review , (University of Technology Sydney, epress),August 2007, 44-63.

'The Dementia Wing of History', Cultural Studies Review ( Melbourne : Melbourne University Publishing) vol 13, no.1, March 2007, 173-186.

'The Powder Room', Meanjin , vol. 63, no. 1, 2004, 54-59.

'The Home Front: Hostess, Housewife and Home in Olympic Melbourne', jumping the queue New Talents 2002, Journal of Australian Studies , (St Lucia , Queensland : Curtin University of Technology, 2002), 201-209.

'The Changing Nature of the Preparators' Art' and 'Melbourne Museum ' in Carolyn Rasmussen, A history of Museum Victoria and predecessors 1854-2000, (Melbourne : Scribe 2001), 112-117 and 384-392.

Rachel Buchanan and Paul James, 'Lest We Forget', Arena Magazine , No. 38, December-January 1998-9, 25-30.