Uncurated
Episodes
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The University of Melbourne’s involvement in the testing of atomic bombs in South Australia is not that well known. Yet it had a massive impact on the Indigenous people living there, with health impacts that were felt for decades.
University academics were enlisted to ensure the safety nuclear blasts at Maralinga and Emu Field. But how good of a job did they really do?
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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 House.
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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 played throughout the dark history of the eugenics movement and the truth behind who John Medley was.
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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, Jiaxuan Zhu explores how knowledge has been built here at the University of Melbourne and reflects on the importance of diversity and looking past just Eurocentric knowledge foundations.
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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 University’s collections.
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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, and how Indigenous knowledge about land preservation was ignored for decades.
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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 campus’s architecture and its relationship with Indigenous Australia.
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Between the 1800s to 1950s, 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 grave robbing and the efforts to repatriate the hundreds of Indigenous ancestors’ skeletal remains back to their land and families.
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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 perversions behind an enigma of a man.
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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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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. With limited knowledge and primitive equipment, sometimes the methods used to heal were even more dangerous than the creatures around them.
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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 small photographs depicting the aftermath of the Glenrowan siege, only to discover Ned’s indigenous counterpart and a side of Australian history that stretches back far beyond any settler.
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