University to house Germaine Greer archive

The University of Melbourne will become home to the significant lifetime archive of one of the country's leading thinkers, Germaine Greer, it was announced today. Comprised of items filling more than 150 filing cabinet drawers, the archive will join collections of other high profile Australians such as former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Nobel Prize for Physiology winner Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet to make the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) an important repository of biographical collections for research and scholarship. The archive has been acquired with the support of generous donations, including a significant gift from Melbourne MBA graduate and company director Margaret Jackson, Trawalla Foundation Chair Carol Schwartz, Penny Maclagen and Dr Chris Scown, Sue Morphet, and Pauline Gandel. Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis said the archive was a wonderful addition to the University's collections, and would draw scholars from around the world to Melbourne. He paid tribute to for Ms Jackson's work to secure funds to procure the materials, as part of the Campaign for the University of Melbourne. "Professor Greer is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th and early 21st century and she has made a formative contribution to feminist thought," he said. "It's very important to us that we've been able to provide a permanent home for the archive of one of our leading alumnae.