Rate My Professor Louise Curham

Dr. Louise Curham is a lecturer in Libraries, Archives, Records and Information Science (LARIS) in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. She completed her PhD at the University of Canberra's Centre for Creative and Cultural Research in 2021, with the thesis 'Tending the archive – how re-use of ephemeral artworks contributes new knowledge to the archive that preserves them, strengthening the artworks and aiding their survival,' supervised by Ross Gibson, Jen Webb, Angelina Russo, and Ana Sanchez Laws. Her academic qualifications also include a Graduate Diploma of Science (Information Services, Archives & Records) from Edith Cowan University (2013), a Graduate Certificate in Audio Visual Archiving from Charles Sturt University (2006), a Master of Fine Arts in Time Based Art from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (2005), and a Bachelor of Arts from the VCA School of Film & Television (1993).

Prior to her academic career, Curham held positions at the National Archives of Australia for nearly two decades, including Assistant Director in Commonwealth Information Policy (2016–2019), Digital Strategy and Solutions (2014–2016), and Government Information Management project officer (2009–2014), as well as Audiovisual Preservation project officer (2002–2007). She lectured in collections, archives, records, and digital preservation at Charles Sturt University from 2020 to 2023 and joined Curtin University in February 2023. Her research focuses on media art preservation, re-enactment of 1970s expanded cinema through the Teaching and Learning Cinema collaboration with Lucas Ihlein, participatory archiving, and strategies for ephemeral live art that resists digital preservation. Key publications include 'Re-enactment, Users Manuals and DNA Storage: Methods for Media Art Preservation' (2024, with L. Ihlein and R. Appuswamy), 'Reaching Through to the Object: Reenacting Malcolm Le Grice’s Horror Film 1' (2015, with L. Ihlein), and 'Caring for Live Art That Eludes Digital Preservation' (2016). Awards include the Margaret Jennings Award from the Australian Society of Archivists (2013), Australia Day Award from the National Archives of Australia (2015), and Australian Postgraduate Award (2015–2017). As a media artist, she performs with hand-processed 16mm and Super 8 film, and has conducted significance assessments for dLux Media Arts (2014) and Performance Space (2010).