The Bill Cowan Barr Smith Library Fellowship

Library Fellows

2011 Lachlan Coleman

Lachlan Coleman, a PhD candidate in the School of History and Politics at the University of Adelaide, is the successful applicant for the 2011 Bill Cowan Barr Smith Library Fellow award.

In a grateful response to the news Lachlan said that the Fellowship award will help him undertake intensive work in the Library's collections to bring his research to completion. This will then allow him to make significant progress towards the write up of his thesis.

Coleman's research is a re-examination of the basis of the Australian Corp's military success on the Western Front in 1918. The Barr Smith Library has built up deep research collections of primary and secondary sources in the field of WWI as a result of the research, scholarship and publications of Professors Trevor Wilson (now Emeritus Professor) and Robin Prior (now a Visiting Professorial Fellow), who identifies the research as a significant contribution to understanding the role of Australia in WWI. The thesis, commenced in 2008, has made good progress and Coleman has published a number of related papers. He was awarded an Australian War Memorial Research Scholarship in 2007 and has also received small grants from the Department of Defence Australian Army History Research Grant fund and the South Australian Government Department of the Premier & Cabinet ANZAC Day Commemoration Fund.

The Fellowship is awarded annually by the Cowan Grant to support study for a postgraduate degree by research in a discipline in which the Barr Smith Library has strong general or special collections.

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