Dr Hatherell's project will extend his ground-breaking work on Brisbane and Queensland cultural history published in 2007 as The Third Metropolis: Imagining Brisbane through Art and Literature 1940-1970 (UQP) by reaching back to some key developments in the cultural and educational life of the city and the state in the 1920s and 1930s.

In particular, he will examine the papers of Frederick Walter Robinson, who played a prominent role in the emergence of English as a distinct university discipline in Australia and its development in Queensland schools.

Frederick Walter Robinson and his colleague Jeremiah Joseph Stable were major players in the remarkable growth of cultural societies and institutions in Brisbane in the 1920s, sharing a conception of 'English' as a civilising and integrating movement that extended from the university to primary and secondary schools to cultural civil society. Dr Hatherell's project will explore their impact on Brisbane cultural life in the interwar period.

- Laurie McNeice, Fryer Library Manager.