Jennifer McCoy’s PhD thesis in history, completed at Federation University in 2023, drew on the experiences of Scottish selectors to study the impact and effectiveness of the Selection Acts of northern Gippsland. She is working with an editor to publish this research.

Author email: jennifermccoy03@gmail.com

Anne Beggs-Sunter has a long association with the Ballarat district as a historian working at Federation University and its predecessors. She has examined the history of the Victorian gold rushes, and the occupation of farming lands around Ballarat as a result of the Selection Acts of the 1860s. In particular, she has analysed farming on the volcanic soils around Buninyong.

Author email a.beggs-sunter@federation.edu.au

Nicholas E. Manganas has been a history teacher in Sydney high schools for over 24 years. He has researched and written numerous historical podcasts on the local history of the Burwood and Ashfield areas in Sydney, where he currently lives. Nicholas is interested in Australian life during the colonial period and the early twentieth century, and has visited national, state and private archives all over Australia. This is his first published work.

Author email: mangonick415@gmail.com

Natica Schmeder is an architectural historian and buildings conservator who has trained and worked in the United States and Europe. She has worked as a built-heritage consultant in Victoria for the past 20 years and is the principal at Landmark Heritage. Prior to emigrating to Australia, she worked as a translator in Poland, specialising in architectural and historical texts, and is now applying her linguistic skills to research the training and early work of Polish architects and their contribution to Australia.

Catherine Townsend graduated from the Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne with first class honours and is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. Her doctoral research focuses on the global spread of modern architecture, specifically the diaspora of architects who fled Europe leading up to, and in the aftermath of, World War II.

Ilona Fekete received a PhD from the University of Queensland in 2025. Her dissertation examines case studies of identity maintenance within the Hungarian diaspora in Australia, investigating the triangular relationship of the diaspora with Australia and Hungary and its influence on identity maintenance. Her research interests include diaspora heritage and diaspora nationalism.

Author email: feketeilona49@gmail.com

Dr Susan Walter is a professional historian who originally worked as an agricultural scientist, focusing on quality assurance and technical management in horticulture and organic waste-management. After researching and writing local history on a voluntary basis for the Malmsbury Historical Society, she combined a passion for natural landscapes, maps, land use history and science in her 2019 doctoral thesis at Federation University Australia titled Malmsbury Bluestone and Quarries: Finding Holes in History and Heritage.