Dr Fiona Gatt’s PhD thesis in history, completed at Deakin University in early 2023, recovers the lived experience of nineteenth-century urbanisation on Melbourne’s colonial urban frontier. Her areas of interest include class, housing, urbanisation and global migration. She works at various universities as a teacher and research assistant and on public history projects. She is coeditor of the Journal of Australian Studies and Pharos, the newsletter of the Professional Historians Association (Vic & Tas).

Kendrea Rhodes grew up in Victoria and has researched her family history for over a decade. She now lives in South Australia where she works  as a researcher, artist and writer. In 2019 she enrolled at Flinders University, Adelaide, to improve her skills, knowledge and research methods. ‘Tracing ancestral voices’ is an edited composition from Kendrea’s unpublished honours thesis. Continuing with her studies at Flinders University, Kendrea is currently undertaking doctoral research into the history and narratives of the Ballarat Asylum.

Peter Davies is a research fellow in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University. His research interests include the archaeology of resource industries and the formation of rural landscapes. He is the co-author (with Susan Lawrence) of Sludge: disaster on Victoria’s goldfields, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Author email: peter.davies@latrobe.edu.au

Susan Lawrence is a professor of archaeology at La Trobe University and has studied the Victorian goldfields for many years. She is the author of Dolly’s Creek: an archaeology of a Victorian goldfields community and (with Peter Davies) An archaeology of Australia since 1788.

Author email: s.lawrence@latrobe.edu.au

Robyn's dissertation focused on early Australian children's literature. Robyn lectures in the Humanities and is passionate about engaging students in historical inquiry. She is currently completing her biography of Olga Ernst.

Jan Harkin completed a PhD in journalism at Monash University in 2021 while attending Hazel Edwards’ “Complete Your Book in a Year” course at Public Record Office Victoria. The PhD included the non-fiction book Older Drivers: Mobility, Ageing and Fitness to Drive, which was written and workshopped during Hazel’s classes. It also included an exegesis: Older Drivers in Australia: Supporting Safe Driving through book-length journalism.

David Harris is an adjunct research fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Inland at La Trobe University. His PhD at La Trobe University, completed in 2014, was an environmental history of the Gippsland Lakes in the nineteenth century. His previous academic research was an MA at the University of Melbourne investigating a history of housing and social reform in inner-suburban Melbourne between 1900 and 1920. He has published on the early history of public housing in Victoria, aspects of Victoria’s colonial fishery and the Gippsland Lakes in the nineteenth century.

Meaghan McKee has worked as a librarian and archivist for many years. Her main interest is in Gippsland history. She inherited her investigative nature from her mother who was a keen genealogist. She holds postgraduate qualifications in Library and Information Studies as well as Heritage and Museum Studies. She recently provided research assistance on a book project on logging and cartage history in Gippsland.

Author email:  immckee01@gmail.com