A big welcome to new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff here in the Faculty. It is awesome to welcome them all and I am amazed by what they each bring to our Faculty.
We warmly welcome Freja Carmichael as the Curator of UQ Art Museum commencing 4 September, 2024. For those that haven't had the pleasure to meet Freja, she is a Ngugi woman belonging to the people of Quandamooka. She brings with her significant industry knowledge, community connections, collections experience and research skills, and has worked on notable and critically acclaimed projects internationally such as 'Transits and Returns' at Vancouver Art Gallery. Over the past decade, she has worked alongside First Peoples stories, artists and communities on exhibitions, programming, collection research and documentation in curatorial roles with art centres, regional galleries, cultural gatherings, contemporary art spaces and national and international art institutions. Freja’s work has been dedicated to celebrating First Peoples weaving practices and knowledges and creating sites for exchange and collaboration through curatorial approaches.
We also warmly welcome Dr Melanie Saward. Melanie is a proud Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman based in Tulmur (Ipswich), Queensland. In July 2024, she joined the School of Communication and Arts at UQ as a Lecturer in Australian Studies, where she coordinates AustLit's BlackWords project, an essential archive and educational resource dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytelling. A widely published author, Melanie's debut novel, Burn, was released by Affirm Press in 2023, and her forthcoming romantic comedy, Love Unleashed, is set to be published by Penguin Random House in 2024.
