Carolyn Rasmussen

PhD, MA, BA, DipEd.

Educated at Coburg High School where she was Dux of her year in 1966, and the University of Melbourne, Carolyn began her working life as a secondary teacher of English before returning to the University in 1975 to undertake post-graduate studies in labour history and the peace movement, with a strong emphasis on the politics and people of the Coburg area.  

Following a year in Boston she returned to Melbourne enthused by the idea of public history after attending the lectures of Richard Neustadt on ‘the uses of history for decision makers’, published in 1986 as Thinking in Time (with Ernest May). It was a frame of mind perfectly suited to the excitement surrounding the sesquicentenary of Victoria in 1985, and the collective that produced Double Time: Women in Victoria – 150 years, edited by Marilyn Lake & Farley Kelly. In that book Doris Blackburn, pioneer feminist and second woman elected to the House of Representative, made the first of many appearance in Carolyn’s subsequent work. 

The stimulation of tutoring for John Hirst and Alan Frost at La Trobe University had led to the writing of an HSC textbook on Early Colonial Society (mentored superbly by Suzanne Mellor) and a developing sense that it might be possible to earn a living by writing. But it was the opportunity to write a history of Footscray Institute of Technology, supported by a deeply engaged committee of historians that cemented her ambition to become a freelance historian.

The history of places of education has loomed large in Carolyn’s career, beginning with Poor Man’s University: a history of Footscray Institute of Technology (1988) followed by histories of Melbourne University in partnership with Professor John Poynter (1996), Lauriston Girls’ School (1999), University of Melbourne Faculty of Engineering, (2004), University High School (2010) and a second work on the history of the University of Melbourne (2018), written while a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow (2013-2017). 

Labour movement history, the peace movement and biography are deeply intertwined in much of Carolyn’s work, through all of which is threaded the story of Maurice and Doris Blackburn. A State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship, (2004-5) and an Australia Council, Literature Board, Established Writer’s Grant (2011) eventually made possible The Blackburns, Private Lives, Public Ambition, published in 2019 and winner of the Victorian Community History Awards History Publication Award for that year.

Another winner of the Best Print Publication award is A Museum for the People: A History of Museum Victoria and its Predecessors, 1854-2000, (2001) a product of one of the best experiences possible for a commissioned historian involving fascinating subject matter and a team of superb communicators. If she could have stayed there forever, Carolyn would have, but the science and technology theme that is central to museums is another of her passions, along with the history of medicine and engineering.   This was just one of several histories of Victorian public institutions, or major figures in them, that includes a history of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (1991, with Tony Dingle) and a biography of David Danks, the father of clinical genetics in Australia (2010.)  Currently she is working on a history of Computer Science at the University of Melbourne, where she has been an honorary fellow since 1991.

The history of institutions, whether local Labor Party branches or major government instrumentalities, can all be seen from one perspective as biographies, and much of the content of those histories are mini biographies, so the emergence of biography as a major theme in Carolyn’s work is not surprising, but it was the encouragement of Geoffrey Serle to join the Victorian Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) in the mid 1990s that lit a spark that has burned ever brighter since then.  Carolyn has written eighteen entries for the ADB, two more are in progress, and as a member of the National Editorial Board since 2011, and chair of the Victorian Working party since 1916, it has become one of the most important strands in her work.

Finally, as a freelance historian, and ‘independent scholar’, Carolyn has been involved with efforts to enhance the status of our work as a ‘profession’, and she is proud to have been a foundation member of the Professional Historians Association (Vic and Tas, 1991) and a contributor to its journal, Circa, on methodology and practice.  From 1996 to 2014 she was a member of the Melbourne University History Advisory Group. From 2001-06 she represented the Independent Scholars Association of Australia on the Harold White Fellowship Committee of the National Library of Australia. Since 2020 she has been a judge for the articles section of the Victorian Community History awards. Carolyn believes passionately that some understanding of history – whether personal, institutional, local or national – is essential to guiding decisions for the future.

Beyond history, Carolyn is secretary of Leading Note Music Education, a small NFP that raises funds for Crashendo https://www.crashendo.net/ a free after-school music program for students at Laverton College who do not have access to regular music classes. Instruments are provided. The program is ensemble-based, emphasises student-led learning, composition and improvisation while also offering focussed instrumental tuition. Crashendo provides a platform for skill-building, performance practice and a chance to explore group and individual identity through creative expression. It also acts as a protective factor for students who have experienced disadvantage and disassociation.