Shifting the Boundaries

The University of Melbourne was already over 110 years old when this history begins. The second oldest university in Australia, it has been graced with a number of histories written by eminent historians. Each of these histories has documented the University’s evolution and diversification from the perspective of their time.

Shifting the Boundaries: The University of Melbourne 1975–2015 continues that story, but the period covered is entirely within living memory. It pauses at ten-year intervals, the first at 1975, to look back at the previous decade. We are invited to enter the University of Melbourne as a living institution, and to watch it as it responds to changing expectations of students, staff and community, to shifting policy frameworks and to an evolving economic and social context.

The principal themes that arc across this story involve massive growth, the evolution towards a research-intensive institution, changing pedagogical imperatives, bureaucratisation and internationalisation in the face of declining public funding.

About the Author

Carolyn Rasmussen completed post-graduate studies in labour history and the peace movement at the University of Melbourne, where she is currently an Honorary Senior Fellow. Her work as a public historian since 1985 has ranged over the history of Victorian public institutions, the history of science and technology, education history, the involvement of women in all of the above, and biography.

Her publications include Poor Man’s University: Seventy Five Years of Technical Education in Footscray; The Lesser Evil? Opposition to War and Fascism in Australia 1920–1941; A Place Apart, The University of Melbourne: Decades of Challenge (with John Poynter), Increasing Momentum: Engineering at the University of Melbourne 1861-2004; ‘A Whole New World’ 100 years of Education at University High School; Double Helix and Double Joy: David Danks the Father of Clinical Genetics in Australia. She is currently completing ta joint biography of the progressive politicians Maurice and Doris Blackburn with the aid of an Australia Council Literature Board grant.