History in Practice Interview – Prof. Susan Broomhall

Abstract

In early 2012, Crystal Abidin and Rukmini Pande had the opportunity to interview Susan Broomhall, Winthrop Professor of History at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Western Australia. Professor Broomhall is a historian of early modern Europe who specialises in the history of women and gender, as well as the role of scholarly histories in heritage tourism and arts industries. She is also one of the Chief Investigators at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

We were very pleased to have the opportunity to interview Professor Broomhall for this issue for a number of reasons! First, in keeping with the theme of the issue, she has had a long association with the notion of collaboration, both in terms of her academic work and publication history. Outside these activities, however, she is currently engaged in organising the very exciting ZEST festival, an event exploring the nature of collaboration in very different and perhaps more applied ways. Her background as a former member of the Limina collective also led to an interesting discussion of how this forum has evolved and how it shaped her personal postgraduate experience. Her views on how to maximise the benefits of collaboration both within the traditional bounds of academia as well as through more informal avenues are surely going to be very interesting to postgraduates everywhere.