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Grimshaw, Patricia (Pat) (1938 - )

Born
1938
Auckland, New Zealand
Occupation
Academic, Feminist and Historian

Summary

Pat Grimshaw has enjoyed a long and distinguished academic career. Having completed postgraduate studies in New Zealand, she joined the Department of History at the University of Melbourne in 1977. Pat is a Fellow of the Academy for Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Academy for the Humanities, and Deputy Editor of the UK journal Women's History Review. She has been a member of the editorial committees of Australian Feminist Studies, Gender and History, Journal of Women's History and Pacific Historical Review, and has supervised over 50 PhDs to completion. In her various roles as supervisor, mentor, lecturer, professor, Head of Department, Deputy Dean, and member of multiple academic and professional associations, she has made an extraordinary contribution to women's history, to the history profession, and to the wider community.

Details

Pat Grimshaw completed her postgraduate studies at Auckland University. Her seminal study of women's suffrage in New Zealand was published by Auckland University Press in 1972.

In 1977, Pat was appointed as a lecturer in women's history at the University of Melbourne. Her new course, 'Changing Concepts of Women's Place', remained central to the women's studies program for the next twenty years. The establishment of the Women's Studies Centre in 1988 owed much to her influence. Pat became renowned for her dynamism and enthusiasm as a lecturer, inspiring the hundreds of students under her tutelage.

Pat's academic work spans a wide field. Early research into American missionary wives in Hawaii sparked her ongoing interest in settler feminism, the civilizing mission, and the rights of white and indigenous women on the Pacific Rim. Later research focused on working mothers, families and social change: the co-edited Double Shift was published in 2005. Pat has co-edited several collections in women's history including Australian Women: Feminist Perspectives (1981), The Half-Open Door (1982), and Women's Rights and Human Rights (2001). Freedom Bound (1995, with Marian Quartly and Susan Janson) brought to light a large number of documents on women in colonial and modern Australia. Creating a Nation (1994, republished 2006) re-told the story of Australia's settlement history with particular focus on the place of women and of Aboriginal Australians within that history. In 1994, Pat co-edited Colonialism, Gender and Representations of Race; in 2002, Letters from Aboriginal Women in Victoria; in 2003, Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights: Indigenous Peoples in British Settler Colonies, 1830-1910; in 2006, Collisions of Cultures and Identities; and in 2007, with Kate Darian-Smith and Stuart Macintyre, Britishness Abroad.

Pat served as Head of the Department of History at the University of Melbourne for a decade (1992-2002) with just one year in respite, and became the Max Crawford Professor of History. She was Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1993 to 1996; reappointed in 2003. From 1995 to 2000 she was President of the International Federation for Research in Women's History. As a Director of the National Foundation for Australian Women, she was instrumental in obtaining an Australian Research Council linkage grant to support the Australian Women's Archives Project - one of approximately ten ARC grants awarded to her or to projects with which she has been involved.

Loved and revered by countless students and frequently called upon for her skills in research, oratory, supervision and leadership, Pat Grimshaw's official retirement in 2006 was a mere formality.

In March 2008 Pat Grimshaw was inducted onto the 2008 Victorian Honour Roll of Women, a Government initiative which recognises and celebrates the achievements of women from all walks of life. In the same week the University of Melbourne announced the Patricia Grimshaw Mentor Excellence Awards, to honour her contribution as a mentor of postgraduate students and younger colleagues on their research projects and career development.

Sources used to compile this entry: Penny Russell, Annual History Citation 2004, History Council of New South Wales; The University of Melbourne (http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/staff/grimshaw.html).

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Published resources

Books

  • Carey, Jane, 1972- and Grimshaw, Patricia, 1938-, Women historians and women's history : Kathleen Fitzpatrick (1905-1990), Margaret Kiddle (1914-1958) and the Melbourne History School, Dept. of History, University of Melbourne, Carlton, Vic., 2001. Details
  • Elizabeth Nelson, Sandra Smith and Patricia Grimshaw, Letters from Aboriginal Women in Victoria, 1867-1926, Department of History, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2002. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, Colonialism, Gender and Representations of Race: Issues in writing women's history in Australia and the Pacific, University of Melbourne (History Dept.), Parkville, 1994. Details

Book Sections

  • Grimshaw, Patricia, 'A white woman's suffrage', in Irving, Helen (ed.), A Woman's Constitution? Gender and History in the Australian Commonwealth, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1996, p. 179. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, 'Reading the silences: suffrage activists and race in nineteenth century settler societies.', in Joy Damousi and Katherine Ellinghaus (eds), Citizenship, women and social justice : international historic perspectives [Papers presented at the 1998 International Federation for Research in Women's History Conference, Melbourne, Australia], University of Melbourne and Australian Network for Research in Women's History, Parkville, 1999. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia and Ellinghaus, Katherine, 'White women, Aboriginal women and the vote in Western Australia', in Patricia Crawford & Judy Skene (ed.), Women and citizenship : suffrage centenary, Centre for Western Australian History, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, 1999. Details

Edited Books

  • Darian-Smith, Kate, Patricia Grimshaw and Stuart Macintyre (eds), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures, Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, 2007. Details
  • Evans, Julie et al (ed.), Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights: indigenous peoples in British settler colonies, 1830-1910, Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 2003. Details
  • Grieve, Norma and Patricia Grimshaw (eds), Australian Women: Feminist Perspectives, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1981. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia and Russell McGregor (eds), Collisions of Cultures and Identities: Settlers and Indigenous Peoples, University of Melbourne (History Dept.), Parkville, 2006. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia and Strahan, Lynne (eds), The Half-open door : sixteen modern Australian women look at professional life and achievement, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, c1982, 344 pp. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia et al (ed.), Creating a Nation, API Network, Curtin University of Technology, Australian Research Institute, Perth, 2006. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, Chris McConville, Ellen McEwen (ed.), Families in Colonial Australia, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, John Murphy and Belinda Probert (eds), Double Shift: working mothers and social change in Australia, Circa, Beaconsfield, Vic, 2005. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, Katie Holmes, Marilyn Lake (ed.), Women's Rights and Human Rights: International Historical Perspectives, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001. Details
  • Quartly, Marian, Susan Janson and Patricia Grimshaw (eds), Freedom Bound, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1995. Details

Journal Articles

  • Evans, J., Grimshaw, P. and Standish, A., 'Caring for Country: Yuwalaraay Women and Attachments to Land on an Australian Colonial Frontier', Journal of women's history, vol. 14, no. 4, 2003. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, 'In Pursuit of True Anglican Womanhood in Victoria, 1880-1914', Women's History Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 1993, pp. 331-347. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, 'Gender, Citizenship and Race in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Australia, 1890 to the 1930s', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 13, no. 28, 1998, pp. 199-214. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia, 'Colonising motherhood : Evangelical social reformers and Koorie women in Victoria, Australia, 1880s to the early 1990s', Women's History Review [Great Britain], vol. 8, no. 2, 1999, pp. 329-349. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia and Ellinghaus, Katherine, 'White women, Aboriginal women and the vote in Western Australia', Studies in Western Australian History, vol. 19, 1999. Details

Online Resources

Barbara Lemon

Created: 23 August 2007, Last modified: 12 March 2008

Site-wide information and acknowledgements

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