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. She still contributes to the paper.

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 2005 she completed her doctorate in history at Monash University. This work has provided a foundation for ‘The Parihaka Album’, the book she is currently writing for Huia Publishing. The book looks at how foundational violence (and non-violence) is remembered and forgotten in different New Zealand sites, including the family, the marae, city streets, academic and popular books, commissions of inquiry, memorials, parks, cemeteries, galleries and archives.

Rachel has also researched how online journalism is changing newspapers, a project that involved interviewing online journalists working at The Age. She is interested in archives of all kinds and the stories they contain. One such story is that of Melbourne POW Loft Cannon and his friendship with British artist Ronald Saerle, the basis for a recent essay in Griffith Review. In ‘Len Lye and me’, a forthcoming essay for Meanjin (June 2009), Rachel looks at how sound archives can be a powerful trigger for memory.

Academic Publications:

‘Bare bones, speed freaks and sleaze: how online journalism is remaking newspapers from the inside out’, peer-reviewed paper presented at Comparative Journalism Studies Conference, July 2008, University of Tasmania, available at: www.utas.edu.au/ejel/journalismstudies/documents/CJS08%20Buchanan%20revised%20paper.pdf

‘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.