Miegunyah Student Project Award Application 2025

Each year, the Museums and Collections department offers six Awards of $2000 each to the University of Melbourne students for small research projects with public outcomes of research findings. Supported by the Miegunyah Fund, the Award requires each student/group to undertake a project on works of art in the Russell and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Collection, in the University’s Art Collection. This scheme aims to give students experience in working in an interdisciplinary context with a material and visual culture collection, and the opportunity to think about how to share their research with their student colleagues and public audiences, while gaining professional development experience from department staff.

APPLICATIONS DUE: 27 APRIL 2025

BACKGROUND

We are seeking innovative and interesting engagements with art held in the Russell and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Collection which take full advantage of interdisciplinary ways of thinking. The Grimwade Collection is varied, reflecting Russell Grimwade’s own interests as a collector, industrialist, chemist, and keen botanist, with a fascination with British exploration and colonisation, and Melbourne’s early history. While principally works on paper, the Grimwade Collection also includes works of art in various media, including paintings, photographs, decorative arts, furniture, and textiles. The Collection also includes a substantial collection of 19th- and 20th-century books held at the Baillieu Library, and archival materials housed at Melbourne University Archives. This project may reference this additional material, but recipients of the Award are invited to centre/base their research on a single work of art, or a small group of works housed within the University Art Collection.

PROCESS

Award recipients will attend a series of group sessions at the beginning of the project in mid-semester 1 2025, featuring an overview of the project timeline, an introductory lecture by the Grimwade Collection Curator, and student project introductions. Selected works of art will be viewed in a group visit to the University of Melbourne Art Collection Store during the third session. While conducting research and preparing outcomes, Awardees will meet regularly, and have access to advice and support from the Museums and Collections department staff, including the Academic Engagement and Art Museums teams, and members of the Collections and Operations teams. Final public outcomes will be held at Potter Museum of Art, Parkville campus, on 11 September 2025.

OUTCOMES

Each Awardee/group will submit a 3000-word written report and deliver a 20-minute public presentation focussing on their research outcomes.

Short, interview-based portrait videos featuring each Awardee/group and their project will be published on the Museums and Collections website, alongside the written reports.

Previous Awardee Outcomes

2024 Miegunyah Student Project Awards

2023 Miegunyah Student Project Awards

2022 Miegunyah Student Project Awards

WHO CAN APPLY

Currently enrolled student(s) at the University of Melbourne in the year of 2025.

We encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. The Award honorarium of AUD$2000 will be shared between participants if applying as a group.

HOW TO APPLY

Complete the attached Application Form, including a 300-word (maximum) Project Description, outlining your intended artwork selection(s)*and the intended focus and outcomes of the Project.

Please return a signed digital copy of the Application Form to Museums and Collections Academic Engagement mc-academicengagement@unimelb.edu.au and include ‘2025 Miegunyah Award application’ in the subject line of your email.

In the case of a group application, each participant must complete the Applicant Form individually, and submit these with a single Project Description for the whole group.

Applicants will need to make effective use of print and digital resources on The Russell and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Collection to structure their ideas and nominate artworks of interest for their project in their application.

Applicants must refer to the Project Timeline below to ensure they are available for the key dates – introductory lecture, copyright lecture, student project introduction, Art Collection store visit, group touch-base sessions, final public outcomes, and filming sessions.

*As there are some artworks currently inaccessible via our online collection browser, this initial selection is designed to be an intended selection only, and we are mindful that the intended work(s) might change as your project evolves.

PAYMENT

The Award honorarium of AUD$2,000 is not intended to cover associated costs, and there is no requirement to submit a budget.

The Award honorarium will be paid upon the completion of 2/3 of the key milestone sessions of the Award as listed in the Timeline document.

APPLICATIONS DUE: 27 APRIL 2025

PROJECT TIMELINE

Applicants are asked to check the project timeline below, to ensure their availability for key dates if they are successful in their application.

RESOURCES

Collection search portal

Grimwade Collection overview

To initiate an Advanced Collection search:

1. Select ‘Collections Search’;
2. Click the arrow to the right of the search field and select ‘Advanced Search’;
3. Select ‘Russell and Mab Grimwade’ from the ‘Collection Title’ field;
4. If you want to minimise the search parameters further, you can do this through the ‘Classification area’.

Publications

Alisa Bunbury, ed. Pride of Place: Exploring the Grimwade Collection, The Miegunyah Press, 2020.

This major publication, with forty contributors, explores the rich visual and textual material in the Grimwade Collection and providing a perspective on Australia’s colonial history was launched in 2020, edited by our Grimwade Collection Curator Alisa Bunbury.

This is a key resource for current scholarship on Russell Grimwade’s collection of material relating to the British occupation of this continent and its settler history and gives an overview of the Collection’s development.

This book will be gifted to successful awardees; it can also be accessed as a hardcopy or ebook from the University of Melbourne Library and is held on reserve at the Baillieu Library on Parkville campus.

John Poynter, Russell Grimwade, The Miegunyah Press, 1967

This was the first Miegunyah Press publication—which the Grimwades funded through their bequests—and can be accessed free at Melbourne University Press.

John Poynter and Benjamin Thomas, Miegunyah: The Bequests of Russell and Mab Grimwade, The Miegunyah Press, 2015.
This provides both biographical information and chapters focusing on how their bequest has been subsequently used. It can be accessed as a hardcopy from the University of Melbourne Library and is held on reserve at the Baillieu Library on Parkville campus.

Thea Gardner, The World of Mab Grimwade, The Miegunyah Press, 2023

This recently published book is the first to explore the roles of Mab Grimwade, an active philanthropist although she remains little known.

It can be accessed as a hardcopy from the University of Melbourne Library and is held on reserve at the Baillieu Library on Parkville campus.

Web Resources

UNCURATED Podcasts by Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

Collections magazine, The University of Melbourne