Uncurated

For many international students, International House is more than just a place to stay—it’s a welcoming oasis in an unfamiliar city. But did you know that the community at International House holds a rich history dating back to 1957?

Dive into the history of International House and one of its most cherished traditions: the Great Trike Race. A race that symbolises the spirit of unity at the International Ho...

John Medley was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 1938 to 1951. But Medley was also a member of the Eugenics Society of Victoria, a group which called for the sterilisation and institutionalisation of minority groups such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, prostitutes and members of the LGBTQI+ community. So why does the university have a building named after him?

Unearth the role the University play...

The Baillieu Library is the largest library here at the University of Melbourne. Walking through the library, the shelves are filled with books on everything from philosophy and history, to science and computing, all from a Western Eurocentric perspective. But the library also holds one of the largest collections of Rare East Asian books and materials in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Throughout this episode, J...

The Harry Brookes Allen Museum is one of many collections at the University of Melbourne. The University has collected artefacts that has contributed to a wealth of knowledge that is vital to Melbourne, Australia and the world. 

But the way University scholars collected these artefacts was not always done in an ethical way. Reporter Haoyue Deng learns how a rare marsupial mole is the key to the forgotten people behind some of the U...

What would Australia look like if we had monkeys swinging around our cities? In the late 19th Century, a number of associations called “acclimatisation societies” sprung up across Australia with the goal of bringing familiar plants and animals to what the British colonists saw as an impoverished landscape. 

This episode explores the massive ecological transformation that shaped what the university’s environment looks like today, an...

The Old Quadrangle is one of the most photographed spots on the University of Melbourne campus, with students and tourists alike posing under its iconic archways. 

The romantic European architecture feels like you've been transported to the set of Hogwarts, but did you know that the stones used to create this effect were stolen from Indigenous lands in Tasmania? 

Reporter Giulia Scenna investigates the history of our ...

Between the 1800s to1950s, anthropologists at the University of Melbourne were digging up burial sites of First Nations ancestors who had been laid to rest and collecting, rather stealing, their bodies. And while some of these human remains were returned to land and reburied, one collection remained hidden away at the university in a storage room until 2003. 

Uncover the true story of The University of Melbourne’s troubled past of ...

On the surface, the University of Melbourne is a historical spectacle – with its grand arches, stone facades, echoing hallways, and the chimes of the old clocktower.

But this university is also home to many secrets, from human remains unearthed on university grounds, to its role in nuclear testing on Indigenous lands.

In an eight-part series, students from the Centre for Advancing Journalism explore the university’s hidden past, re...

A thesis, glass tubes, a bronze plaque. This is the evidence left to remember world-class atmospheric physicist Jean Laby. She was the first woman to achieve a PhD in the School of Physics in 1956. But on a campus that lacks recognition of historically significant women, this prompts the question: how would Laby have been commemorated if she was a man? Jade Murray explores the University of Melbourne Parkville campus to search for ...

This is a story about an artwork illustrating a Chinese camp in Ballarat, Victoria, depicted by Percy Lindsay. This is a story about a painting that carries within it the joy, tears and fears of Chinese gold miners. This oil canvas is hidden and locked away in a black suitcase at the Ballarat gallery with its paper sketch stored at the University of Melbourne. This week on Uncurated, Caitlin Duan and Isabella Vagnoni take you on a ...

For First Nations people, art has been a vehicle to tell personal and universal stories for over 60,000 years. Ngarrindjeri artist Trevor Nickolls’ story is complex, exploring the history of dispossession and loss, and the hope and beauty of finding a way back to knowing. Breaking free of the assumptions and prejudices placed on First Nations artists by white society, his ground-breaking career inspired artists across the country t...

The thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian Tiger, remains one of Australia’s most identifiable animals despite having gone extinct almost 100 years ago. In its time, it was hunted, mishandled and neglected, yet people are still captivated by it today. They desperately hope the animal still exists in hiding, and one scientist at the University of Melbourne is on the brink of a discovery unlike any other...one that could reverse th...

Our city streets are filled with statues of men who did things, with little permanent reminder of the women who have shaped Australian society. Julia (Bella) Guérin is one of these women. Famous in her time for her achievements as Australia’s first female university graduate and a noted teacher, writer, orator and political organiser, Bella Guérin has been all but forgotten by the history books. This week on Uncurated, reporter Meg...

An oil painting lost in a storeroom for decades, a dusty student card, a misplaced animal skull; these are some of the objects in the University of Melbourne's twelve museums. Each was forgotten in a different way. Join students from the Centre for Advancing Journalism on a journey of unforgetting as they ask why some objects - or people - are lost from history. And what that says about Australia. Uncurated is a new six-part series...

It’s easy to speak of those we remember. But what about those we’ve forgotten? A hank of human hair transports us back to Brighton in 1882 when a musical ingenue by the name of Percy Grainger was born. His fame grew at an exceptional speed… But then disappeared just as quickly. This week on Uncurated, Nell Geraets and Mengjie Cai replace a missing note in Australia’s music scene, exploring the passions and ...

Art is made to be looked at, to be objectified. But people are not. So what could this mean for those painted onto canvasses that are then flaunted around museums across the world? This week on Uncurated, Yimin Qiang and Angus Thomson venture into Melbourne University’s Arts West to look at 100 women’s faces, all of which were painted by men. Who are these women? And where are all the female artists?

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Music for this w...

One of the first things that tourists visiting Australia hear is that there's a lot that could kill you. Sharks, snakes, crocodiles, jellyfish — whether you’re on land or in water, nowhere seems safe. So imagine what it was like back when British settlers were colonising this strange new land. This week on Uncurated, Thomas Phillips and Xiao Zhu begin with an intricate little medical box that packs a hell of a punch. Wi...

We all know Ned Kelly. In fact, we’re pretty tired of hearing about him. Australian history is filled to the brim with these sorts of stories — white-washed and not even that old. So where are the parts of Australian history that haven’t been told? Where are the stories told by those and about those that aren’t white, British men? In this episode of Uncurated, Rebecca Pridham and Maya Pilbrow look at six sma...

It all began with a letter. A colourfully illustrated poem about a Gothic house built for a couple who donated a huge museum collection to the University of Melbourne. This missive is hidden among the 700 plus items collected by Russell and Mab Grimwade. It tells a more personal story than the other objects they gathered, which construct a colonial version of Australian history. In this episode of Uncurated, Pema Monaghan, Josie He...