Dr Mimi Colligan
Adjunct Research Fellow, National Centre for Australian Studies
View contact details in Monash Staff Directory
Biography
Mimi Colligan writes on 19th century popular culture and biography and has been associated with Monash University since 1968 when she started a mature age part-time Arts degree. After graduating with Honours in 1973 she became a research assistant in the Arts Faculty. During the next decade or so, she worked part-time in the English and History Departments as well as being the Victorian research assistant for ANU's Australian Dictionary of Biography. In 1981, she commenced researching her PhD in the History Department. This was granted in 1987. For the next six years, Mimi was Senior Research Officer with Australia Post researching images for the stamp designers and writing Stamp Heritage books. A freelance since 1993 she has also curated exhibitions at the Ballarat Art Gallery for the 140th Anniversary of Eureka Stockade, the Old Treasury on the Gold Rush (1994) and on Cremorne Gardens, Richmond for a Richmond apartment developer (2006).
Part of her PhD thesis was published by MUP as Canvas Documentaries in 2002. This book covered the history of panoramic entertainment in Australia and New Zealand including theatre panoramas. She has also contributed many articles to scholarly journals. Mimi is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, a member of the Victorian Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and a Board Member of the International Panorama Council based in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Mimi is at present researching and writing her next book, a biography of Mr. and Mrs. G.B.W. Lewis 1818-1925. Their lives encompassed popular theatre and circus in England, Australia and Asia.
Recent Publications
"American Panoramists Moving Around Australia" in Gabriele Koller ed. The Panorama in the Old World and the New: Proceedings from the 12th International Panorama Conference 11-14 November 2004, Hunter College of the City University of New York. IPC, Bűro Wilhelm, Amberg, Germany, 2010. ISBN-13: 978-3-936721-36-2 (Mimi helped with the editing, proofing etc. of the book via e-mail.)
"Theatre in the Neild Scrapbooks" in La Trobe Journal, May 2009, No. 83, pp. 113-129
"'This Window has a History': The Shakespeare Window at the State Library" in La Trobe Journal, Spring 2006, No. 78, pp. 94-103
"Dorothy Crawford" and "Harry Jacobs" in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 17, MUP, Melbourne 2005, pp. 264-265; 581-582