Catharine Coleborne

Catharine Coleborne FASSA FAHA FRSN
Occupation	academic
Employer	University of Newcastle
Known for	studying madness

Catharine Coleborne is an Australian medical historian and academic administrator. She was the Head of School and Dean of Arts at the University of Newcastle (2015 to 2022) and is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Society of New South Wales. ^[1]

Life

Coleborne took her first degree at the University of Melbourne before going on to study "Madness" to gain a doctorate from La Trobe University in Melbourne. She looked at gender and institutional confinement for the mentally ill during the nineteenth-century when Australia was part of the British Empire. ^[2]

Coleborne has continued to study madness and she has published books and papers on her research. ^[3]

She has published four books as sole author including Madness in the Family: Insanity and Institutions in the Australasian Colonial World, 1860–1914 in 2009 when she was an Associate Professor at Waikato University . ^[4]

In 2015 she became the Head of School and Dean of Arts, University of Newcastle. ^[2] She was elected to be a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2021 together with 36 others including David Kalisch, Nisvan Erkal and Lyn Parker in 2021 ^[5] In that year she was also the President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts and Social Sciences (DASSH) and she was a keynote speaker at the National Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services National Conference. ^[6]

Coleborne was awarded a research fellowship by the National Library of Australia in 2025. ^[7]

Selected publications

Books

• Madness in the Family: Insanity and Institutions in the Australasian Colonial World, 1860–1914
• Coleborne, Catharine; MacKinnon, Dolly (2011). Exhibiting madness in museums: remembering psychiatry through collections and display. Routledge research in museum studies. New York: Routledge. ISBN   978-0-203-80710-1.
• Coleborne, Catharine (1 October 2015). Insanity, Identity and Empire. Manchester University Press. ISBN   978-0-7190-8724-0.

References

1. "Fellow Profile – Catharine Coleborne". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
2. "Staff Profile". www.newcastle.edu.au. 16 January 2015. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
3. "sg:person.0606671704.29 - Springer Nature SciGraph". scigraph.springernature.com. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
4. Coleborne, C. (18 November 2009). Madness in the Family: Insanity and Institutions in the Australasian Colonial World, 1860–1914. Springer. ISBN   978-0-230-24864-9.
5. "37 Leading Social Scientists elected as Academy Fellows". Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. 8 November 2021. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
6. "Professor Catharine Coleborne". www.nagcas.org.au. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
7. "NLA announces 2025 Fellows". Books+Publishing. 15 January 2025. Retrieved 15 January 2025.