EUGENICS

John Medley was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 1938 to 1951. But Medley was also a member of the Eugenics Society of Victoria, a group which called for the sterilisation and institutionalisation of minority groups such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, prostitute…

DONATIONS

The Baillieu Library is the largest library here at the University of Melbourne. Walking through the library, the shelves are filled with books on everything from philosophy and history, to science and computing, all from a Western Eurocentric perspective. But the library also holds one of the larg…

COLLECTORS

The Harry Brookes Allen Museum is one of many collections at the University of Melbourne. The University has collected artefacts that has contributed to a wealth of knowledge that is vital to Melbourne, Australia and the world.  But the way University scholars collected these artefacts was not alw…

COUNTRY

What would Australia look like if we had monkeys swinging around our cities? In the late 19th Century, a number of associations called “acclimatisation societies” sprung up across Australia with the goal of bringing familiar plants and animals to what the British colonists saw as an impoverished la…

STONES

The Old Quadrangle is one of the most photographed spots on the University of Melbourne campus, with students and tourists alike posing under its iconic archways.  The romantic European architecture feels like you've been transported to the set of Hogwarts, but did you know that the stones used to…

REMAINS

Between the 1800s to1950s, anthropologists at the University of Melbourne were digging up burial sites of First Nations ancestors who had been laid to rest and collecting, rather stealing, their bodies. And while some of these human remains were returned to land and reburied, one collection remaine…

Introducing Uncurated Season 3

On the surface, the University of Melbourne is a historical spectacle – with its grand arches, stone facades, echoing hallways, and the chimes of the old clocktower. But this university is also home to many secrets, from human remains unearthed on university grounds, to its role in nuclear testing…

To Infinity and Beyond

A thesis, glass tubes, a bronze plaque. This is the evidence left to remember world-class atmospheric physicist Jean Laby. She was the first woman to achieve a PhD in the School of Physics in 1956. But on a campus that lacks recognition of historically significant women, this prompts the question: …

The Other Gold Rush

This is a story about an artwork illustrating a Chinese camp in Ballarat, Victoria, depicted by Percy Lindsay. This is a story about a painting that carries within it the joy, tears and fears of Chinese gold miners. This oil canvas is hidden and locked away in a black suitcase at the Ballarat galle…

The Tightrope Walker

For First Nations people, art has been a vehicle to tell personal and universal stories for over 60,000 years. Ngarrindjeri artist Trevor Nickolls’ story is complex, exploring the history of dispossession and loss, and the hope and beauty of finding a way back to knowing. Breaking free of the assum…