The Making Public Histories Seminar Series is offered jointly by the Monash University Institute for Public History, History Council of Victoria and the State Library of Victoria.

The series will be presented throughout 2010 in the Village Roadshow Theatrette, State Library of Victoria

The aim of this series is to organize topical seminars on a range of interesting topics on public history, making history, heritage that can be linked to Museum/Library events around the place.  The series runs in the State Library of Victoria.

This seminar series explores issues and approaches in making public histories and is open to anyone interested in historical representation in contemporary society.

Making Public Histories Series 2009 presented the following seminars-

19 March 2009
Recording Everyday Life and ‘Writing for History’:  Mass Observation in Britain and Australia
Presenters: Dorothy Sheridan (MO Archive Development Director and Honorary Professor at Sussex University) Kate Darian-Smith (Professor of Australian Studies & History, University of Melbourne).

30 April 2009
Remembering Australia’s ‘Great War’
Panel: Alistair Thomson (Anzac Memories, OUP, 1994), Marina Larsson (Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War, UNSW Press, 2009); Bart Ziino (A Distant Grief : Australians, War Graves and the Great War, UWA Press 2007); Ross McMullin (biographer of Pompey Elliot, Scribe 2002, and Will Dyson: Australia's radical genius Scribe 2006).

4 June 2009
Water Histories – Lessons for Australia in a Changing Climate
Presenters: Michael Cathcart (Australia Centre at the University of Melbourne), Paul Sinclair (Healthy Ecosystems Program Manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation).

23 July 2009
Making Migrant Histories
Presenters: Maria Tence (Manager, Community Gallery) Peg Fraser (Public Historian) (Patricia Kimtia from the Mauritian community).

26 August 2009 
In Conversation with Alessandro Portelli.
Alessandro Portelli is one of the most influential and exciting oral historians in the world. His prize-winning books on oral history and popular memory include The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Form and Meaning in Oral History (State University of New York Press, 1991). From 2002 to 2008 he served as historical advisor to the mayor of Rome, and he is currently co-manager of Rome's House of History and Memory and Professor of American literature at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. Sandro Portelli discussed  his life and work as an oral historian ‘in conversation’ with leading Australian oral historians Paula Hamilton (University of Technology Sydney, co-author of Oral History and Public Memories, 2008) and Alistair Thomson (Monash University, author of Anzac Memories, 1994 and co-editor of The Oral History Reader, 2006).

8 October 2009
Making History Online