Jeannine Baker

Biography

I have a PhD in Australian History (University of Melbourne, 2014). My thesis, which examined the experiences of Australian women war reporters during World War II, was awarded the Dennis-Wettenhall Prize for the best Australian history postgraduate thesis at the University of Melbourne. I was the 2004 Nancy Keesing Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, and a postdoctoral fellow in MMCCS from 2014 to 2016. I also have a BA in Mass Communications (Macquarie University) and an MA in Public History (University of Technology, Sydney). I am the author of Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam (NewSouth, 2015) and the co-editor, with Michelle Arrow and Clare Monagle, of Small Screens: Essays in Contemporary Australian Television (Monash University Publishing, 2016). I have extensive experience in the media and museums sectors as a researcher, writer, curator, oral historian and documentary maker. I produced Holding a Tiger by the Tail: Jessie Litchfield (Earshot, ABC Radio National, 2015), about the Darwin newspaper editor and journalist Jessie Litchfield, and Fler and the Modernist Impulse (Hindsight, ABC Radio National, 2011) about the impact of modernism on the Australian home.I also wrote and directed the television documentary Our Drowned Town (SBS TV, 2001) about the flooding of the NSW town of Adaminaby for the Snowy Mountains Scheme. In 2013 I co-curated the exhibition Life Matters, Action Counts: Michael Callaghan and Collaborators, at the University of Wollongong. I have worked as an oral history interviewer for the Australian Museum, National Library of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive.

Research Interest

My research interests are in media history (press and broadcasting), with an emphasis on women's work in the Australian media industry; twentieth-century Australian history; and women's history. I am currently researching the history of women in Australian broadcasting.