It is a pleasure to announce that Professor Clare Wright OAM has agreed to be our new Library Patron. Some of you may know Clare as an award-winning historian, author, broadcaster and public commentator who has worked in politics, academia and the media.
She has been very active in recent years with appearances on Q&A, The Drum, The Project and Behind the News giving an historical perspective on current affairs. She is popular public speaker, panellist and interviewer and makes frequent appearances at literary festivals, in television documentaries, on radio talk shows, in other people’s podcasts and generally anywhere someone will pass her a microphone.
In 2020, Clare was awarded an Order of Australia Award for “services to literature and to historical research”. In 2022 she was appointed to the Council of the National Museum of Australia and is a past Board Director at The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas.
Clare is the co-founder and co-convenor of A Monument of One’s Own, a national advocacy body for statue equality whose Patron is Julia Gillard. In 2023, in her capacity as Professor of Public Engagement, Clare was the Guest Curator of the Bendigo Writers Festival.
The third instalment of Clare’s Democracy Trilogy, a history of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions based on a decade of documentary research and community consultation, will be published by Text in early 2024.
Clare lives on unceded Wurundjeri land in Melbourne/Naarm.
We look forward to seeing Clare around the Library.