Fiona Cameron
Research Fellow
University of Sydney
History
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry
Sydney New South Wales
2006 Australia
Email: fiona.cameron@museum.usyd.edu.au
http://www.usyd.edu.au

Fiona Cameron is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History at the University of Sydney. Prior to her appointment as a Fellow, Fiona was a lecturer in Museum Studies at the University of Sydney from 1996-2000 and at the Material Culture Unit, James Cook University from 1988-1989. Dr Cameron has been working in the museum profession for the last 17 years in the curatorial research, interpretation and exhibitions development fields. She has worked as a social history curator in a number of museums and as a curatorial consultant on major exhibition projects in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. Dr Cameron is currently the Chief Investigator for four prestigious Australian Research Council grants. The first, Themescaping Virtual Collections, (a partnership with the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and Vernon Systems Ltd) aims to develop new ways of accessing and interpreting online museum collections drawing on extensive user research in its conceptualisation. A second, the Knowledge Objects project while complementing the aforementioned study, seeks to to reconceptualise collections documentation and practices to meet the needs of new knowledge paradigms and an emerging community of users. Furthermore, the research program Exhibitions as Contested Sites - the Role of Museums in Contemporary Society, (an international research partnership between the University of Sydney, Australian Museum, the Australian War Memorial and museums in Canada, US and the UK) explores the contemporary challenge of museums to represent new histories, contemporary debates and taboo topics in exhibitions. And most recently, the National Museums and Globalisation study seeks to examine the important issue of the role of national museums in a globalising context. That is how institutions might respond to debates of global importance and represent narratives of nation and identity within this framework.

Fiona will present The next generation - 'knowledge environments' and digital collections