From PhD thesis to book and beyond

What do Melbourne theatre in the 60s, the complex world of microbes, Australian wartime pin-ups and those strange cardigan-clad types whose gaze never leaves the skies as they search for signs of extraterrestrial life have in common? The answer is one of the University’s quiet success stories – the Writing Centre for Scholars and Researchers. Each of these seemingly unconnected topics has been the subject of a book for a general readership by some of the graduates of the Writing Centre’s range of programs.

Back in 2004, a three day workshop and master class designed to assist PhD students to transform their research into writing for a non-specialist audience was instigated by then Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow Hilary McPhee and featured such writers as Don Watson, Kathy Bail, James Button and Carmel Bird. So successful was the workshop that, within twelve months, the Writing Centre had come into existence.

Now, five years later, the Centre takes PhD students, early career researchers and staff from across the entire University and helps them get their ideas into the opinion pages of the country’s major newspapers, into magazines like Griffith Review, Meanjin or Overland, and into books with commercial publishers. The Centre also looks at outcomes such as exhibitions, documentary film and on-line and keeps an open mind about possibilities for communicating research in the future. Centre Director, Simon Clews, jokes that he recently used a slide of an image from the Walking with Dinosaurs arena spectacular with the caption “And here are some palaeontologists having far too much fun ...”

Martin Plowman was a participant in the Centre’s programs in 2007 – his recently released book The UFO Diaries, published by Allen & Unwin earlier this year, was borne out of a Cultural Studies PhD which examined the belief systems of UFO-believers. This self-styled ufology-ologist took his research and translated it into a part travelogue, part memoir and part social history that retains the depth and intelligence of the original work, but adds humour and good, old-fashioned story-telling. Launched by Shaun Micallef at Writers at the Convent, Plowman’s book has taken his important ideas to an audience that would never have come across them otherwise.

Accessibility is also at the forefront with Idan Ben-Barak’s Small Wonders: how microbes rule our world published by Scribe Publications. Small Wonders is simply popular science at its best. With a wry sense of humour Ben-Barak has penned the life and times of those microscopic, but absolutely essential organisms, microbes – as he says: “It’s a strange and dangerous world where oxygen is a lethal poison, sulphur is a delicious treat, deception is a basic survival skill, and perfectly good alcohol is simply thrown away.”

And historian Madeleine Hamilton has seen her PhD not only become a book – Our Girls, Aussie Pin-ups of the 40s and 50s, published by Arcade Publications in 2009 - but her work was also the inspiration behind the award-winning SBS documentary Paper Dolls: Australian Pin-up Girls of World War II.

But books are only a very small part of the work produced by the Centre’s graduates. The list of course participants whose names have graced the pages of the major newspapers and magazines of this country runs to many, many pages and takes in a wide and varied subject list. From Craig Fry on drugs in society to Beth Driscoll on literary prizes to Fraser McDonald on rockets and on to Tracy Stirling on cow fertility, it seems that no subject has missed the attention of the Writing Centre’s emerging wordsmiths.

The Writing Centre’s next workshop program commences with Writing for Readers, an introduction to the world of commercial publishing, which takes place on Tuesday 5, Wednesday 6 & Thursday 7 July. Applications close Monday 20 June. Writing for Readers is open to academic staff currently employed by The University of Melbourne and students currently enrolled in a graduate research degree at the University or alumni who have completed a graduate research degree at the University within the past three years.

For more information about the University’s Writing Centre for Scholars and Researchers, please visit:
www.msgr.unimelb.edu.au/writingcentre/