About

Australian Women's History Forum
incorporating Women's History Month

The Australian Women's History Forum (AWHF) aims to enhance understanding of the role of women in the history of Australia.

The AWHF website provides resources for teachers, students and others keen to know more about women's history. A key activity of AWHF is the celebration each March of Women's History Month, originally an initiative of Helen Leonard.

The AWHF website is a gateway to online information on women who have shaped Australian history.  It is being developed as a useful resource for teachers, students, media professionals, travellers, professional historians, family and local historians, writers and filmmakers, librarians, archivists, curators and collectors.

The AWHF reference group provide specialist advice on website content.

AWHF Patrons

The Hon Margaret Reid AO
Mary Sexton

AWHF Committee

Chair: Pamela Harris
Editorial: Dr Lenore Coltheart
Administrative Officer: Ms Di Johnstone
Publications: Tikka Wilson

AWHF Reference Group

Dr Pat Clarke
Professor Marilyn Lake
Professor Ann McGrath
Ms Ros Russell
Professor Marian Sawer
Dr Ann Summers
Dr Clare Wright

AWHF Sponsors

Dr Romaine Rutnam

About the AWHF Committee

Dr Lenore Coltheart (Editorial). Lenore taught political history in Australian universities for 25 years and held research fellowships at the Australian National University and at Newnham College at Cambridge University, before moving to Canberra in 1997. From 1997 to 2003 Lenore worked with the National Archives of Australia on projects including the Documenting and Democracy and Australia's Prime Ministers websites. Lenore has a long-standing interest in the role of women at the League of Nations, which led to her interest in feminist internationalist Jessie Street. She published Jessie Street: A Revised Autobiography in 2004 and is currently working on a biography of Jessie Street.

Ms Pamela Harris (Chair) has been a long-time resident of Canberra, having also lived in Colombia and England. In the late 70s she undertook postgraduate studies in librarianship, subsequently working in the High Court library when it moved to Canberra. She later completed a Master’s Degree in Public Policy at ANU and worked in various public sector positions relating to income support, aged care, health and the environment. In early 2000, Pamela was awarded a Public Service National Australia Day Achievement Medallion for her work on negotiating the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Later in the same year she received a Centenary of Australia Public Service Award for contributions to the achievements of Environment Australia. Now retired from the public sector, Pamela maintains a strong interest in international relations, the environment, human rights and other social policy issues.

Ms Di Johnstone, Administrative Officer, is a retired Australian diplomat who served at diplomatic missions in Pretoria, Salisbury, Nairobi, New York, Los Angeles, and as Ambassador to Nepal. As President of the Foreign Affairs and Trade Association she campaigned to increase women’s representation as Heads of Mission. She was seconded to ESSO (Australia) and, after Joint Service Staff College, to the Defence Department. She was a UN Observer at the 1994 South African elections. She received a Defence Secretary’s Commendation in 1994 and a DFAT Secretary’s Australia Day Award in 1996. In retirement her major interests are supporting the Ifa Lethu Foundation (returning to South Africa apartheid-era art), women’s history, animal welfare and resident action on planning and heritage issues.

Dr Tikka Wilson (Publications) is a managing editor specialising in website editing. She has worked at the United Nations in Geneva, the ANU, the National Archives of Australia and is currently the Multimedia & Web manager at the National Museum of Australia. She has worked on teams developing public history websites since the late 1990s including Documenting a Democracy, Uncommon Lives, Australia's Prime Ministers, Cook's Pacific Encounters and, most recently, Collaborating for Indigenous Rights. In the mid-1990s she worked with Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation on their submission to the National Inquiry on the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from the Their Families and, located in Women's Studies at ANU, wrote her PhD thesis on the subject of Aboriginal Stolen Generation autobiography.