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Current Projects
Murphy Index
Space Heritage
The Murphy Index :: Australasia in British Architectural Periodicals 1837-1914
While recently living in the London for some years I commenced a project to index references to Australia and New Zealand in the British architectural press from its inception in the early 19th century up to 1914.
I did this using holdings at the RIBA Library in London, the British Library at Euston Road and at Colindale, and in the
Institution of Civil Engineers Archive. So far it covers 9 publications, and amounts to approximately 4,200 entries. Journals have been indexed by undertaking a page by page search of each volume, and also consulting existing (partial) indexes where available. Illustrations listed from the Illustrated London News were compiled from the existing comprehensive index for that publication. In geographic scope, the index covers Australia, New Zealand, their territories in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and Antarctica, and also Australasian people and things in Britain. Articles ten lines or less are quoted in full, with longer articles summarised.
So far the entries collected represent an initial data extraction and I want to double-checked them all before it goes public. I also hope to produce a publication of some kind scoping and analysing the indexed material.
Space Heritage :: The Heritage Management of Space Artefacts
The heritage management of space artefacts is a new, developing area of conservation practice and theory.
It now over 50 years since the launch of first orbiting satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957, and since then humans have launched spacecraft to the moon, the planets and interstellar space. The interplanetary space missions, particularly those which have landed spacecraft (and people) on the surface of other planetary bodies have been of immense historical and technological significance. In many cases space artefacts from these missions remain in a near pristine condition on the surface of these bodies today.
My particular topic of interest is the heritage management of human artefacts on the Martian surface. Working in collaboration with Dirk Spennemann, I have so far co-authored one paper published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and am currently working on another examining mission crash forensics.