Susan Marsden (South Australia)
Dr Susan Marsden ‘learnt on the job’ as a young professional historian, recording and transcribing interviews for her first commissioned book, A history of Woodville (1977), running a project for unemployed teenagers at Port Adelaide, and investigating the impact on working-class families of the introduction of full-time schooling at the beginning of the twentieth century. Around the same time she became a founding member of the Oral History Association and first president of the SA Branch, and co-authored the handbook that is still in wide use in Australia (many updates later).
Most of her subsequent history books, exhibitions and heritage studies have included oral history. She works as a consultant historian on national, state and local history projects throughout Australia, and has also been employed as South Australia’s State Historian and as National Conservation Manager at the Australian Council of National Trusts in Canberra.
She has authored and co-authored more than 120 books, articles, internet publications and published reports. Recent work includes the history of the SA Housing Trust since 1987, and oral history interviews for national, state and local collections and, including 50 recorded as an ongoing interviewer for the National Library of Australia. Her latest co-edited work brings the writings of professional historians to the Internet in SA175/Celebrating South Australia.