APSIG newsletter no. 59: November 2005

Harold White Fellows announced

Four scholars have been selected for the National Library of Australia's Harold White Fellowships for 2006. Each of the scholars, who are expected to take up their fellowships at the beginning of the year, will spend three or four months carrying out research using the library's collections.

The fellows are:

Pamela Gutman, an honorary associate in the department of art history and theory at Sydney University, who will be writing a biography of Gordon Hannington Luce. Luce, a friend of E.M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes, went to Burma in 1912 as a professor of English and remained there for the greater part of his life, becoming a leading authority on the country. The library acquired a large collection of his books, manuscripts and personal papers after he died in 1979.

Bernadette Hince, who recently completed her doctoral thesis at the Australian National University on the sub-Antarctic islands. She proposes to study and edit the 1953-54 Heard Island diaries of John Béchervaise. Poet, essayist, teacher and mountaineer, Béchervaise led three Australian expeditions to the Antarctic between 1953 and 1960. He kept detailed records, letters and photographs documenting the beauty of the Antarctic, the extreme climate, the geology and fauna, and the relationships between men living in utter isolation.

Jemma Purdey, writer-in-residence at Monash University's centre of Southeast Asian studies, who has embarked on a biography of Herb Feith (1930-2001). Feith did early volunteer work in Indonesia and later kept in close contact with intellectual and political leaders in Indonesia. He wrote and lectured extensively on Indonesian politics and history during his time at the department of politics at Monash (1963-1990) and was active in the peace movement. Dr Purdey will explore Feith's large personal archive which the library acquired after his death.

Carolyn Strange, a Canadian scholar, has been based at the centre for cross-cultural research at the Australian National University. She will study Thomas Griffith Taylor (1880-1963), an Australian geologist, meteorologist and geographer. Taylor, a member of Scott's 1910-13 Antarctic expedition, founded the department of geography at Sydney University. He was a prolific writer, investigating climate change, environment, race, nationalism and migration. He also wrote an unpublished autobiography, kept diaries and scrapbooks and wrote a huge number of letters. Most of these papers are held in the library.

Further details of all of the national library's grants and awards include the Harold White Fellowships.