Student’s summer research project a journey back in time
Fri Jan 15 2016 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Student’s summer research project a journey back in time
15 January 2016
Rachel Woods
Some students like to take a journey to the beach for their summer break, but Rachel Woods is taking a journey back in time.
Rachel, along with 23 other Faculty of Education and Social Work students, is spending her summer break as a Summer Scholar. For her project she will be working in the faculty’s School of Critical Studies in Education for Dr Frances Kelly’s research project called “A material history of higher education: mining an online archive of images of the University of Auckland in the 20th century.”
Rachel will be analysing and ‘mapping’ the archive into four themes, things, people, spaces, and activities.
In ‘things’ she will be categorising images of objects, such as obsolete and unknown machines and people engaging with them: people will be images of staff, students, politicians, benefactors, famous guests (including Dudley Moore) and others; spaces will include images of research environments such as lecture theatres, libraries and labs; and activities will cover both every-day activities, and unusual events and significant celebrations.
This fascinating archive of the University is part of a larger online collection relating to the history of the institution, accessed through the library webpages. The archive of photographs contains over 22,000 scanned images (with an estimated additional 4-5000 still to be added). The source is mainly a set of negatives of images taken from 1963-1998 by the media team. The decision was made early on to migrate everything to the online archive with little or no culling, so there is a vast range of subjects.
“I decided to become a summer scholar because the project intrigued me. An archive of this size and nature provides a fabulous opportunity to put to practice the analysis skills I have learned throughout my degree,” Rachel says.
“I hope to discover more about the history of the University, and about how higher learning in New Zealand has been constructed. It is interesting to consider the changes and continuities which exist between the past and today.”
The collection of photographs is a rich resource for historians of higher education, showing life at the university in the 20th century.
Rachel, who is from One Tree Hill in Auckland, is studying towards a double major in History and Education.
“I am attracted to this area of study because I enjoy the challenge of looking at historical material and using it to form an interpretation of the past.”
Contact
Anna Kellett, Media Relations Adviser
Email: anna.kellett@auckland.ac.nz