Professor Melanie Oppenheimer’s National Library of Australia Fellowship

Image at top: His Excellency the Governor General Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson and his wife Lady Helen (centre) with family members and Aides, May 1914, Government House, Melbourne [Family Album, Novar, Scotland].
Image at top: His Excellency the Governor General Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson and his wife Lady Helen (centre) with family members and Aides, May 1914, Government House, Melbourne [Family Album, Novar, Scotland].

Lead Chief Investigator Professor Oppenheimer recently completed a fellowship at the National Library of Australia where she gave a talk about writing the biography of the founder of the Australian Red Cross Lady Helen Munro Ferguson and her husband, Sir Ronald.

Born into privilege in Ireland and growing up within an imperial world occupied by her father, Lord Dufferin – one time Viceroy of India – Lady Helen married Ronald Munro Ferguson, a young, aspiring liberal politician and Scottish laird in 1889.

Together through a sense of duty, aristocratic mission and feminist philanthropic liberalism, the pair’s union and career manifested itself eventually in the positions of Governor-General of Australia and the foundational President of the Australian Red Cross during the tumultuous years of the First World War.

You can view her lecture online through the NLA facebook page: https://fb.watch/eWFzoMoV-N/