RHSV Council

President Richard Broome AM, Emeritus Professor of History, La Trobe University, FAHA, FRHSV Chair, RHSV Publications Committee, Co-editor Victorian Historical Journal

Richard is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. He taught at La Trobe University for over thirty years and has won national teaching awards. For many years he also lectured to secondary students and at secondary teachers’ conferences and was the inaugural Patron of the History Teachers Association of Victoria (2013-2022). Richard is the author of sixteen books including the dual prize winning Aboriginal Victorians. A History since 1800 (2005) and Aboriginal Australians. A History Since 1788, fifth edition (2019), both published by Allen & Unwin. He was the lead editor of the RHSV’s Remembering Melbourne 1850-1960 (2016, 2017) and also lead editor of the RHSV’s Melbourne’s 20 Decades (2019). His book Mallee Country. Land, People, History (2020), was written with three colleagues, Charles Fahey, Andrea Gaynor and Katie Holmes. He is a co-holder of two Australian Research Council grants, co-editor of the Victorian Historical Journal and co-editor of  4 volume VCE textbook Analyzing Australian History by Cambridge University Press (2021).

Dr Rosalie Triolo
Vice-President; Chair Historical Societies Support Committee

Rosalie is an adjunct senior lecturer and publishes and presents widely for different audiences in History education and Australian history, especially history of Australian education and WWI.

She has worked in History education for over 40 years. For 25 years, she helped facilitate the development of specialist teachers of History at Monash University for Australian and overseas schools, retiring at the end of 2021. She is a Fellow and currently the Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, as well as Chair of its Historical Societies Support Committee. She has served on the RHSV Council since 2014 and is currently one of two delegates to the Federation of Australian Historical Societies (2020- ). She is a past President of the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria (6 years), a past Board member of it (further 24 years) and a Life Member. She is Victoria’s representative on the Council of the Australian National Museum of Education (2015- ), is a past Vice-President of the History Teachers’ Association of Australia, formerly being its delegate to the Australian Historical Association (2010-20), and has received many awards for her work.

Treasurer: Daniel Clements

With over two and a half decades in the accounting field, Daniel Clements is currently the Business Advisory & Taxation Director at Nexia Australia, specialising in operational, strategic and compliance support.

Hon Secretary: Carole Woods OAM FRHSV

Carole is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and has been the RHSV hon. secretary for twelve years and a member of its Publications Committee since 1989. She currently chairs the RHSV Fellowship Committee. A strong advocate for community history, Carole was a judge of the Victorian Community History Awards for twenty years, and chaired the judging panels for 7 years. In 2014, assisted by Jenny Coates and Australian Red Cross Archivist Moira Drew, Carole curated the exhibition ‘The Australian Red Cross in the Great War’.  In 2018 she curated the exhibition ‘Vera Deakin’s World of Humanity’ at RHSV. She was formerly a librarian and bibliographer. Carole’s publications include Beechworth: A Titan’s Field, Vision Fugitive and a history of the Fitzroy Library and most recently, Vera Deakin and the Red Cross. She also belongs to the Camberwell, Fitzroy and Hotham historical societies. (updated May 2021)

Assistant Hon Secretary: Cathy Butcher

Cathy Butcher worked in the Commonwealth Public Service from 1983-89 delivering the Hawke Government’s policies for worker participation, industrial democracy and equal employment opportunities into Australian government factories. In 1989 Cathy became an Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) trainer then Manager at the Trades and Labour Council in the ACT From 2000 Cathy worked as OH&S coordinator for the Victorian Trades Hall Council representing workers on numerous Worksafe Victoria stakeholder groups. In 2013 the Victorian WorkCover Authority presented Cathy with the award: ‘Outstanding Leadership and Contribution to Health and Safety’. Cathy retired in 2015 but was appointed as a member of The Independent Occupational Health and Safety Compliance and Enforcement Review by the Minister for Finance, Robin Scott, established to make recommendations to improve health and safety outcomes for Victorian workers. All the recommendations of the panel were accepted by the Victorian Government

Margaret Anderson

Margaret Anderson joined the Council of the RHSV in 2016 and is a member of the Heritage Committee. Margaret researches and writes on women’s history, the history and demography of the family and on aspects of public history and museums. She has held senior positions as a public historian in South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria, and is currently General Manager of the Old Treasury Building, Melbourne. She is a Fellow of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies and a member of the Board of the History Council of Victoria.

​Paul Fearon, FCPA, FAICD, FIPAA (VIC)

Paul joined RHSV as a Councillor in 2022. He is a board member of the charity Ryder Cheshire Australia and Honorary Treasurer and Public Officer for The Ryder Cheshire Foundation Victoria. Now retired, Paul was formerly Victoria’s statutory safety and technical regulator for the electricity, gas, and pipeline industries, CEO of Energy Safe Victoria, and CEO of the Victorian Essential Services Commission. Paul has recently completed post-graduate qualifications in History and intends to pursue further research on Victoria’s colonial history.

Elisabeth Jackson

Chair: RHSV Collections Committee

Elisabeth completed a degree in history at the University of Melbourne. Encouraged by Weston Bate, she obtained a position at the La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria. This led to a career in libraries and she became CEO of Hume Moonee Valley Regional Library and later Library Manager at the Moonee Valley City Council. She has maintained an interest in history and is a member of the Brunswick Community History Group and the Coburg Historical Society. She served as a Councillor with the City of Brunswick and was Mayor in 1990-1991.

Judith Smart AM, FRHSV

Judith co-edits the Victorian Historical Journal. She is honorary associate professor at RMIT University and has published on Australian women’s organisations, women and political protest, beauty contests, venereal disease, and the Australian home front during World War I. She is a member of the Australian Dictionary of Biography Victorian Working Party and is on the RHSV Publications and Heritage Committees, as well as representing the society on the History Council of Victoria.

Charles Sowerwine, Emeritus Professor of History , University of Melbourne
Chair, RHSV Heritage Committee

Charles Sowerwine grew up in the New York suburbs. In 1974, he came to Melbourne as Lecturer in French History at the University of Melbourne and immediately joined the National Trust, recognising the uniqueness of Melbourne’s Victorian heritage. He is now Emeritus Professor at Melbourne and Fellow at La Trobe University. Local history and heritage remain a great passion.

Nikita Vanderbyl

Nikita Vanderbyl is an Adjunct Research Fellow in History at La Trobe University, Mildura, where she also teaches Critical Criminology and Sociology. Interested in how artwork can further our understandings of entangled colonial histories, her doctoral research examined the First Nations artist William Barak (Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung) and, in consultation with his descendants, revealed how his artworks were transported across British and German empires during the nineteenth century. Her research has appeared in Aboriginal History Journal, La Trobe Journal and History Workshop Journal.

Peter Yule

Peter Yule studied and taught history at the University of Melbourne before moving to Warrnambool where he worked in a family business while also writing histories of Warrnambool, Koroit and the Shire of Minhamite. Since 1996 he has worked as a freelance historian, publishing over twenty books including histories of Australian National Airways, the Collins class submarine project, and Vietnam veterans since the war, and biographies of W L Baillieu and Sir Ian Potter. His histories of the Royal Children’s Hospital and Carlton won best print/publication and best collaborative work categories respectively in the Victorian Community History Awards. He is a Fellow of the RHSV, an honorary history fellow at the University of Melbourne and a member of the Warrnambool, Koroit, Port Fairy and Mortlake Historical Societies.