JULIA TORPEY is a PhD candidate at The University of Sydney. Her PhD is titled History in the making: re-imagining heritage, identity and place across Darug and Gundungurra lands. The project will explore Darug and Gundungura people’s experience of making sense of Australia’s colonial history, its impact on place and its influence on the creation of contemporary Aboriginal identity making for people of the Blue Mountains and Western Sydney.
Julia has completed a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne, majoring in Indigenous and Development Studies, and has also completed a Masters of Urban Planning, also from the University of Melbourne. She has worked as a social and cultural planner and social researcher. Her interests lie in storytelling and social justice, and she has successfully merged these interest with community arts and theatre projects including Urgent (2004, Random House), and collaborative theatre projects for the 2008 Next Wave Festival (Melbourne), 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions (Melbourne) and 2010 Fringe Festival. In 2011 she completed studies in Indigenous Arts Management at the Victorian College of Arts to support these interests.
This website is located within the context of Ann McGrath's and Peter Read's ARC Linkage Project (LP100100427) “Deepening Histories of Place: Exploring Indigenous Landscapes of National and International Significance”, The Australian National University and Sydney University, 2011-2013.