Researcher biography

Dr Dolly MacKinnon is an Associate Professor in Early Modern History at The University of Queensland. Her research background spans history and music, and her cultural history research, teaching, and service concentrate on the marginalized and institutionalized by analysing the mental, physical (including material culture) and auditory landscapes of past cultures.

Dolly won the inaugural Arts Faculty Research Excellence Award for Senior Researchers (2011) at The University of Queensland. Dolly was also awarded a UQ New Staff Research Fund (2011), a University of Queensland Promoting Women Fellowship (2014), and an inaugural Faculty Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities (2015), Faculty of HASS, UQ.

She is an Associate Investigator (2012 & 2016) with the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for the History of Emotions (The University of Queensland/The University of Western Australia) for the following two projects:​

  1. ARC CHE AI Project 2012: Emotional Landscapes: English and Scottish battlefield memorials 1638-1936
  2. ARC CHE AI Project 2016: Soundscapes of Emotion: bell ringing in England c1500-c1800

Dolly's international research is demonstrated by her consistent collaborative grant successes including multiple ARC (both Linkage and Discoveries) projects, and an international Marsden Fund-Royal Society of New Zealand, totaling just under 1 million dollars.

Her most recent ARC grants include the following:

  • ARC Discovery Grant ($249,000) with Professor Elizabeth Malcolm (The University of Melbourne) and Dr John Waller (Michigan State University).

Project: 'A History of psychiatric Institutions and community care in Australia, 1830-1990'). See online database, Australian Psychiatric Care: A History of Psychiatric Institutionalisation and Community Care in Australia c.1811-c.1990 (http://www.ahpi.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/researchteam.html) (2007-2011);

  • ARC Linkage Grant ($149,000) with Professor Elizabeth Malcolm & Dr Nurin Veis (Museum Victoria) (2009-2012) at The University of Melbourne.
  • ARC Discovery Grant ($300,000) with Megan Casidy-Welch (Monash University) analysing 'Battlefields of memory: places of war and remembrance in medieval and early modern England and Scotland' (2014-2016).

Areas of research