Professor appointed curator at State Library

Pearl Beach resident Professor Emerita Jill Roe has been appointed an Emeritus Curator of the State Library of NSW.

The award of Emeritus Curator is an honorary appointment conferred on a former member of staff at the State Library or an external person who has made eminent and sustained contributions to the development, preservation or interpretation of the collections of the State Library.

Professor Roe is best known for her biography of Miles Franklin, an Australian writer and founder of the Miles Franklin Prize for Australian literature.

She has also published a companion volume of the letters of Miles Franklin, based on the 116 volumes of Franklin's papers, which comprise one of the State Library's most significant literary treasures.

Her work made the essence of the Franklin papers available to scholars and the wider public. Her biography of Franklin won the Queensland Premier's Book Prize, the South Australian Premier's Non-Fiction Prize and the Margarey Medal for Biography in 2010.

While much of Professor Roe's research was carried out in the Mitchell Library, a great deal of the writing was undertaken in the pre-war fibro cottage at Pearl Beach that she acquired with a legacy from her father in 1975, The cottage was extended and modernised in 2003 and since then has been her permanent home.

Professor Roe was a founding member of staff at Macquarie University, where she taught British, Australian, and social policy history to two generations of students and supervised numerous research theses.

She also served on many committees within the discipline and more widely.

Professor Roe was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University 1994-95, and later head of modern history at Macquarie, a position she held until retirement in 2002.

In 1997, she was awarded a personal chair in modern history, and after her retirement served as Director of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature Centre.

Appointed a member of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography in 1985, Professor Roe served two terms as its chair, from 1996 to 2006.

In this role, Prof Roe vigorously advocated the online development of the Dictionary, and a supplementary volume for individuals missed in the original publications.

Professor Roe has contributed many entries to the Dictionary, drawing much of her source material from the State Library's collection.

Media release, 15 Aug 2016

Lynne Lillico, Pearl Beach Progress Association