Doctors Down Under Exhibtion

Academic

Fallon Mody
School of Historical and Philosophical Studies

Intern

Louise Box
School of Culture and Communication

Project description

In the interwar years, hundreds of medical migrants arrived in Australia, many escaping persecution in Europe. Dr Fallon Mody’s Doctors Down Under (‘DDU’) research focusses on the often invisible but vital contributions made by refugee doctors to rural and regional communities in Victoria. The aim of this internship was to develop an online exhibition (using OMEKA) to showcase just one of these doctors: Dr Arthur Deery, who practiced in the Toora and Healesville regions in the 1940s-1960s. As a country doctor but also an ‘enemy alien’, Jewish Hungarian-born Dr Deery was a highly regarded but sometimes controversial figure in the communities he served.

The OMEKA exhibition was designed to share the fascinating story of Dr Deery, but also to be a catalyst for new connections between the DDU project and non-academic audiences in Victorian communities. Planning and implementing the exhibition developed the intern’s skills in visual storytelling, data visualisation, online communication with diverse audiences, and website design. Training and mentoring in data visualisation, geo-mapping, APIs, OMEKA, and web scraping has reinforced the potential of digital humanities tools for the intern’s future research and curatorial projects.

Want to get involved with the Digital Studio internship program? We welcome applications from research students to undertake the internship, and from academics and external organisations interested in hosting an internship and supervising an intern.

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