AUTHOR: DR BOBBIE OLIVER

Bobbie Oliver is a senior lecturer at the Research Institute for Cultural Heritage, Curtin University where she teaches Cultural Heritage Studies at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

She has recently completed researching and writing Unity is Strength. A history of the organised labour movement in Western Australia, 1899-1999, which is due to be published by Curtin Books/Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 2003.

Dr Oliver's current major research project involves interviewing and collecting photgraphs, documents and ephemera of past employees of the Westrail Workshops at Midland. With Dr Patrick Bertola (Social Sciences) and Ms Mia Lingdren and Mr Brogan Bunt from Murdoch University, she has secured an ARC Linkage grant of $208,000 over three years with matching cash and in-kind contributions from ten industry partners. A major history of Workshops and an interactive CD-ROM are planned for completion in 2004.

She has published numerous scholarly papers and three histories:

• Towards a Living Place. Hospice and Palliative Care in Western Australia, Perth: Cancer Foundation of WA, 1992;
• War and Peace in Western Australia. The social and political impact of the Great War, 1914 to 1926, Nedlands: UWA Press, 1995; and
• Peacemongers. Conscientious Objectors to Military Service in Australia, 1911 to 1945, Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1997.

In 2000, Dr Oliver assisted Dr Andrea Witcomb in curating the JCPML Exhibition Shaping the Nation: John Curtin and Australia.