Author, Researcher, Historian
I was pleased to present the prestigious Spielvogel Oration by invitation of the Ballarat Historical Society on 21 May 2025. The Oration is an annual event in honour of Nathan Spielvogel, a public intellectual, historian, teacher, broadcaster, and writer (See Weston Bate’s short bio at https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/spielvogel-nathan-frederick-8607). I was proud and humbled to follow a long […]
Earlier this year Edward Elgar published a new Handbook of Research Methods in Social Work. I contributed a chapter called “Documentary Analysis” with Shurlee Swain, Wendy Foote and Chris Krogh. Here is an Abstract: Writing is a practice as central to social work as listening. The capacity to write and the choices made when writing […]
A new article by Frank Golding, Sue McKemmish & Barbara Reed, published in Archives and Manuscripts https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/view/11021/11949
“If only they’d kept proper records”: Care Leavers speak back to history: A paper by Frank Golding at a seminar titled ‘Honouring stories of struggle: reassessing Australian records of disadvantage’, Canberra, 21 October 2022. The seminar was sponsored by the Steering Committee of the Documenting Australian Society of the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World […]
My PhD thesis from Federation University Australia is now available on line. This is a very brief summary: Australia has a long history of removing children from their families when they are deemed to be neglected or ‘in moral danger’. Placed in orphanages, children’s Homes and foster ‘care’ out of the public gaze, these children […]
A group of Care Leavers (in Australia) and Care Experienced People (in the UK) have initiated the Alliance for Care Experienced People in Higher Education – a project currently being developed by care experienced people for care experienced people in Higher Education. There are care experienced people researching, working, and studying in Higher Education who […]
Frank Golding, 13 March, 2019 at the Melbourne County Court Flanked by five hefty policemen, the Cardinal sits impassively at the rear of County Court Room 3.3, while from the front, Chief Judge Kidd reads his sentencing report, without relent. Not accustomed to listening to others for such a stretch, Pell will have to wait […]
Senator Derryn Hinch was a member of the Senate Committee examining the Bill before the Parliament on a national redress scheme. The Senator demonstrated that not all politicians come to meetings like this one with a closed mind. A few days after the hearing, he posted the following part of his diary on Crikey.com. These […]
HUI ON THE ROYAL COMMISSION IN NEW ZEALAND Leonie Sheedy, CEO of CLAN, and I were invited to participate in a hui (gathering or workshop) in Wellington, New Zealand on 14-15 February. The purpose of the hui was to discuss the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the NZ Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse […]
Hope Street: From Voice to Agency for Care-Leavers in Higher Education This is a new article written by Dr Jacqueline Wilson, Dr Philip Mendes and myself just published in the latest issue of Life Writing In summary: In the early 1980s, one of the authors became an adolescent ward of the State of Victoria, Australia, […]