Dr Andrew May
Senior Lecturer
- Telephone:
- (+61 3) 8344 8993
- Email:
- a.may@unimelb.edu.au
- Fax:
- (+61 3) 8344 7894
- Location:
- Room 541 East
History, John Medley Building
The University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Academic Profile (click on the link for more information)
Research
Andrew May is an Australian urban historian. His research and teaching interests reach across cultural landscapes, material culture, public history, municipal government, missionaries, and Australian social history generally. As a principal editor of and major contributor to The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, he guided that project’s development from the mid 1990s to its publication by Cambridge University Press in 2005. His interests in multimedia have seen him involved in the development of history in new media formats, including Melbourne Podtours, eGold, and Pathways to the Past, a learning module on using images as historical evidence. He is currently developing the Encyclopedia of Melbourne in online format, and convened the most recent meeting of ANZDEG (the Australian and New Zealand Digital Encyclopedias Group). He is completing a history of Welsh missionaries in the Khasi Hills of India in the mid 19th century, and current collaborative projects include a history of Australian Town Planning Associations (with Rob Freestone and others), and study of gender, faith and missions in Australia (with Pat Grimshaw).
Andrew has served on advisory committees of the National Trust, City of Melbourne, Public Record Office Victoria, Heritage Victoria, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne Immigration Museum, Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Melbourne Museum, and the National Archives of Australia. He currently serves as on the executive of the Australian Historical Association, as is a Board Member of Australian Historical Studies. Dr May supervises across a great range of Australian history topics at both Honours and Postgraduate levels. In 2006 he was awarded the ‘Individual Contribution to Profile’ award in the City of Melbourne’s ‘Melbourne Awards’.
Web projects
eGold
Encyclopedia of Melbourne
Pathways to the Past: Images
Publications
2009
- May, A. ‘Ideas from Australian cities: Relocating urban and suburban history’, Australian Economic History Review 49, 1 (2009): 70-84.
- Brown-May, A. & Fraser, P. ‘Gender, respectability and public convenience in Melbourne, Australia 1859-1902’ in Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner (eds), Ladies and gents: Public toilets and gender, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, forthcoming July 2009.
2008
- Brown-May, A. 'In the Precincts of the Global City: The Transnational Network of Municipal Affairs in Melbourne, Australia' in Pierre-Yves Saunier and Shane Ewen (eds), Another Global City: Historical Explorations into the Transnational Municipal Moment 1850-2000, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 19-34.
- Brown-May, A. ‘Sex and salvation: Modelling gender on an Indian mission station’ in Amanda Barry, Joanna Cruickshank, Andrew Brown-May and Patricia Grimshaw (eds), Evangelists of Empire?: Missionaries in colonial history (Melbourne: e-Scholarship Research Centre, University of Melbourne).
- Brown-May, A. & Reidy, S. ‘Beautiful Cities for Beautiful Living: the Victorian Town Planning and Parks Association 1914-1929’ in Proceedings, Sea Change: Histories of New and Renewed Urban Landscapes, Urban History/ Planning History Conference, University of the Sunshine Coast.
2007
- Brown-May, A., Elkner, C. & Reeves, K. ‘Taking the rushes on line: The eGold project’ in K. Reeves & D. Nichols (eds), Deeper Leads: New Approaches in Victorian Goldfields History, Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services, 2007, pp. 67-83.
- Brown-May, A. ‘The City’s Toil: Views of Marvellous Melbourne’. In Terence Lane (ed.), Australian Impressionism, Melbourne, Australia: National Gallery of Victoria: 31-37.
- Brown-May A. ‘Collision and Reintegration in a Missionary Landscape: The View from the Khasi Hills, India’. In McGregor R & Grimshaw P (eds), Collisions of Cultures and identities: Settlers and Indigenous People. Melbourne, Australia: Department of History, The University of Melbourne, pp. 141-161. First published electronically July 2006 by RMIT Publishing on Informit Library www.informit.com.au.
2006
- Brown-May A. ‘The City as Encyclopedia’. Meanjin. 65 (2): 195-204.
- Brown-May A & Graham M. ‘”Better than a Play”: Street Processions, Civic Order and the Rhetoric of Landscape’. Journal of Australian Studies, 89: 5-16.
- Lucas AM, Maroske S & Brown-May A. ‘Bringing Science to the Public: Ferdinand von Mueller and Botanical Education in Victorian Victoria’. Annals of Science. 63 (1): 25-57.
2005
- Brown-May AJ & Swain SL. The Encyclopaedia of Melbourne. Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press.
- Brown-May, AJ. ‘”I cittadini stanno iniziando a lamentarsi”. Saperi municipali e contrattazioni intorno ai comportamenti pubblici molesti a Melbourne’, Storia Urbana: Rivista di studi sulle trasformazioni della città e del territorio in età moderna. [Milan, Italy], XXVIII, 108: 53-66.
- Brown-May AJ. ‘Daniel Henderson’. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplement 1580-1980. Parkville, Australia: Melbourne University Publishing.
- Brown-May AJ. ‘Ellen Cahill’. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplement 1580-1980. Parkville, Australia: Melbourne University Publishing.
- Brown-May AJ. ‘Pathways to the Past: Using images as historical evidence - a multimedia teaching module’. Agora. 40 (3): 50-51.
2004
- Brown-May AJ. ‘Death, Decency and the Dead-House: the City Morgue in Colonial Melbourne’. Provenance. 3 (November 2004): 1-6.
2003
- Brown-May AJ. ‘Happy thoughts: recent approaches to contextualising material cutlure in Australian urban history’. In Murray T (ed), Exploring the Modern City: Recent Approaches to Urban History and Archaeology. 25-40. Sydney, Australia: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales & Archaeology Program, La Trobe University.
- Brown-May AJ & Day N. Federation Square. South Yarra, Australia: Hardie Grant Books.
2001
- Brown-May AJ. Espresso! Melbourne coffee stories. Melbourne, Australia: Arcadia Publishing.
- Brown-May, A. ‘Spilling the beans’ in Debating the City; An Anthology, ed. J. Barrett & C. Butler-Bowden, Historic Houses trust of New South Wales in association with the University of Western Sydney, Sydney: pp. 229-239.
- Brown-May AJ. ‘The Surreal Thing’. Meanjin. 4: 93-98.
1998
- Brown-May AJ. Melbourne Street Life. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Scholarly Publishing. (winner of the 1999 Victorian Community and Local History Award).
Teaching
131-300 Colonising Australia
131-301 Remaking Australia
131-702 History Practice: Materials and Methods
Supervision
Current RHD Students
- Robyn Ballinger (PhD), An inch of rain and what it means – a history of water on the northern plains of Victoria
- Robyn Ballinger (PhD), An inch of rain and what it means – a history of water on the northern plains of Victoria
- Rebbecca Sanders (PhD), History of Churchill Island
- Jo Clyne (PhD), Museum Theatre
- Barbara Minchinton (PhD), History of the Otways
- Leo Martin (PhD), Cultural landscapes in Castlemaine
- Barbara Nichol (PhD), 'The breath of the wok': Chinese restaurant businesses in Victoria to 1960s
- Ai Kobayashi (PhD), William Macmahon Ball and his place in 20th century Australian intellectual life
- Sally Ruljancich (PhD), The Increased Regulation of Melbourne’s Essential Food Supplies from the 1840s to 1920s: Public Works, Public Space, Public Health
- Francesco Vitelli (PhD), Robert Hoddle and ornament of Empire
- Jillian Wheeler (PhD), Who owns Linton’s past? Multiple histories in a Victorian goldfields town
- Pete Minard (PhD), A history of Acclimatisation Societies in Australia
- Leanne Howard (PhD), Community Involvement In Managing Cultural Landscapes: Reality or rhetoric?
- Susan Reidy (MA), A cultural history of Fairy Hills
- Micahel Taffe (MA), A History of the Ballarat Horticultural Society
- Liz Downes (MA), The wreck of the American whaling ship the Trinity
- Ember Parkin (MA), The effectiveness of projected sound as a tool for the display of history (and memory) in Australian museums
- Vibeke Pedersen (MA), A history of sporting halls of fame
Completed Students
2008
- Jane Rhodes (MA, Public History & Heritage), Spectacular Spectacular!: Cole’s Book Arcade, Melbourne 1863 to 1927
- Margaret Fraser (MA, Public History & Heritage), Australian needlework samplers
2007
- Claire Higgins (MA, Public History & Heritage), Changing trends: how the growth and decline of the textile and clothing industry influenced the lives of its migrant women workers
- Caitlin Stone (MA, Public History & Heritage), The dirtiest town in the world: domestic rubbish and its disposal in 19th and early 20th century Melbourne
2006
- Snjezana Cosic (MA, Public History & Heritage), Before you head for that friendly world: representations of Australia in immigration publicity disseminated in Great Britain, 1945-1960
- Kate Luciano (MA, Public History & Heritage), Something old, something new: the role and function of the small, single-focus museum in the world of infotainment
2005
- Laura Donati (MA, Public History & Heritage), Almost pretty: a history of Sydney Road
- Penny Edmonds (PhD), Urban frontiers: the racialisation of colonial urban space in Melbourne, Victoria and Victoria, British Columbia, 1835 to 1871
2002
- Tony Birch (PhD), Framing Fitzroy: contesting and (De)constructing place and identity in a Melbourne suburb
- Damian Veltri (MA), The Evolution of an outer suburb : a study of the Shire of Braybrook, 1888-1951