Michaela Ann Cameron

BA (Hons I), Dip. Ed., PhD (USYD)

Founder and Director of the Female Factory Online

Founder, Director, Editor, Transcriber & Database Developer

DR. MICHAELA ANN CAMERON is an historian of colonial Australia and colonial America with specific research interests in ethnohistory, social history, sensory history (aural history / sound studies), digital history, public history, eighteenth-century Parramatta, nineteenth-century Parramatta, convicts, seventeenth-century New France, First Peoples, settler colonialism, Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples, and neurodecolonisation.

Michaela Ann Cameron, Stealing the Turtle's Voice, Algonquian, Iroquoian, Soundways, Acoustemology, The Old Parramattan, Cameron, PhD Thesis
Michaela Ann Cameron, Stealing the Turtle’s Voice: A Dual History of Western and Algonquian-Iroquoian Soundways from Creation to Re-creation (PhD Thesis, 2018). Click here for full text (open access)

Dr. Cameron completed her PhD thesis, Stealing the Turtle’s Voice: A Dual History of Western and Algonquian-Iroquoian Soundways from Creation to Re-creation, at the University of Sydney in 2018. An ethnohistorian specialising in sensory history (sound and audition), her doctoral thesis explores how and why deeply ingrained acoustemological differences created cultural conflict between natives and newcomers both in and beyond the colonial period in the New World. Towards the end of her PhD candidature, she contributed a chapter, “Singing with Strangers in Early Seventeenth-Century New France,” to the edited collection, Daniela Hacke and Paul Musselwhite (eds.), Empire of the Senses: Sensory Practices of Colonialism in Early America, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2017), pp. 88–112. Read more about her American History research here.

Michaela’s additional research interests in colonial Parramatta and particularly the convict experience have stemmed from the fact that her family has lived in Parramatta continuously since 1801. Known as “The Old Parramattan” for the purposes of her work as a public historian, Michaela has worked on a number of projects with the aim of promoting the history and heritage in her local area and raising awareness of its endangered heritage sites.

Most recently, Dr. Cameron was awarded a $66,290 Create NSW Arts and Cultural Grant for a collection of “Old Parramattans” to be published on her digital, public history website St. John’s Online (aka St. John’s Cemetery Project). Other activities over the years include;

  • Developing the CONVICT PARRAMATTA walking tour for the Dictionary of Sydney Walks app (2015)
  • Writing 11 entries on Parramatta’s heritage for the Dictionary of Sydney
  • Promoting Parramatta’s lesser-known and well-known heritage items via Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging on “The Old Parramattan.”
  • Founding and directing the Female Factory Online as well as managing related social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).
  • Founding and directing St. John’s Online as well as managing related social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).
  • Personally transcribing thousands of pieces of evidence for the FFO and St. John’s Online over the past six years.
  • Personally identifying and profiling thousands of individuals for the FFO and St. John’s Online.
  • Writing 38 entries for St. John’s Online.

Qualifications

  • PhD (History), University of Sydney
  • Dip Ed (Secondary: English), University of New South Wales
  • BA (Hons I), Majors: History and English, University of Sydney

Publications

Memberships

  • Friends of St. John’s Cemetery, Parramatta General Committee Member (2016 to present)
  • National Trust NSW (Member)
  • Parramatta and District Historical Society (Member)
  • Parramatta Female Factory Friends Action Group (Member)

Contributions

Essays

Blog Posts

Compilations

ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0002-2355-8061