Award for Alba
Dr Avril Alba from the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney has awarded a Vice Chancellor’s Early Career Researcher Award for Excellence.
Dr Avril Alba
One of only two recipients in this category across the University, the award recognises that since beginning her academic career at the University of Sydney in 2012, Dr Alba has built and maintained an outstanding research profile creating a distinctive academic as well as public profile and reputation that has established her as a leader in the fields of Jewish and Museum Studies in Australia, as well as sowing the seeds for an international reputation in these areas.
Dr Alba’s research achievements include her first monograph The Holocaust Memorial Museum: Sacred Secular Space with Palgrave Macmillan in 2015 as well as a variety of journal articles and book chapters in both Australian and international publications. She has also been the recipient of numerous grants, most notably the Australian Research Council Linkage project, Australian Holocaust Memory, Human Rights and the Contemporary Museum with A/Professor Jennifer Barrett and Professor A. Dirk Moses and partner organisation, the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Dr Alba has also sought to increase the impact of her research through community engagement. In particular she has maintained her connection with the Sydney Jewish Museum where she currently serves as Project Director/Consulting Curator for the first comprehensive redevelopment of the permanent Holocaust exhibition since the museum’s opening. The new exhibition is estimated to attract over 40,000 visitors per annum and will have an expected 15-year lifespan.
Finally, Dr Alba has sought to communicate her research to diverse public forums with over 40 public talks from 2012-2016 ranging from panel presentations to invited commemorative addresses in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. She has developed a media profile with appearances on Compass: The Jewish Roots of Jesus and on The Moral Compass: Religion in Public Schools (aired (13 September 2015 ). She has also given radio interviews including a 28 October 2015 Interview on Radio National’s The Religion Report with Andrew West for 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate.
