Rate My Professor Lorina Barker

Dr. Lorina Barker is an Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Local, Community and Oral History in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education at the University of New England. A descendant of the Wangkumara, Muruwari, Kooma, Baakindji-Kurnu, and Kunja peoples, she grew up in the Aboriginal community of Weilmoringle in north-west New South Wales. Inspired by her great-grandfather Jimmie Barker's oral history recordings published as The Two Worlds of Jimmie Barker: The Life of an Australian Aboriginal, Barker pursued studies in history and storytelling. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Letters, Graduate Diploma in Education, and PhD in History from the University of New England, awarded in 2014 for her thesis Ngarraka Yaan: A Murdi History of Weilmoringle, which examines family and community oral traditions.

Prior to her lecturing appointment in 2004, Barker worked in administration and student support at UNE's Oorala Aboriginal Centre. She has team-taught courses including Modern Australian History, Family and Community Histories, Australian Local and Community Histories, Twentieth Century Australian History, Colonial Australian History, Oral History, Local and Community History, and Aboriginal History Since the Late 18th Century. Her research focuses on oral history, Indigenous history, family and community histories, and culturally appropriate methodologies for Aboriginal research. As director of Taragara Research, she has led projects such as the ARC-funded Looking Through Windows, a multimedia exhibition on Aboriginal removals under the NSW Aborigines Protection Act exhibited at the New England Regional Art Museum in 2017 and other venues in 2018, and the Songlines of Country ARC Discovery Indigenous project mapping Baiame, Mundaguddah, and Seven Sisters songlines. She collaborates on the Australian Message Stick Database. Key publications include 'Yarning up oral history: An Indigenous feminist analysis' (2018), 'Voice, representation and dirty theory' (2017, Postcolonial Directions in Education), 'Matrilineal Narratives: Learning from voices and objects' (2016, Hecate), 'Using poetry to capture the Aboriginal voice in oral history transcripts' (2010, Passionate Histories), and 'Hangin’ Out and Yarnin’: Reflecting on the Experience of Collecting Oral Histories' (2008, History Australia).