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History and Resources

For almost 25 years the Institute of Postcolonial Studies has sought to build collaborations, projects, and knowledge in support of new forms of sustainable coexistence.

The Institute of Postcolonial Studies is an independent public educational project. We interrogate colonial relations and their consequences in the past, present and future in Australia and globally.

The Institute of Postcolonial Studies was founded in 1996 by Phillip Darby and Michael Dutton as an independent venue for the exploration of postcolonial scholarship, politics and creative practice. 

Occupying its own premises in North Melbourne, the Institute was established with generous support of a private benefactor as well as strong local and international networks of friends and scholars. The Institute is home to the internationally renowned scholarly journal, Postcolonial Studies and a book series Writing Past Colonialism (with Routledge).

IPCS is governed by a community of scholars, artists, activists, and advocates with deep and wide-ranging expertise.

We aim to support projects that intervene in public debate; generate discussions that can change minds; and produce practically grounded ideas for ethical and just relationships geared towards a better future.  

At the core of the activities and projects we aim to foster and support there is one central guiding concern: how can we best respond to the pressing challenges of coexistence in the present?

ARTICLES

The contributions below, written over the years by friends and members of the Institute, reflect our history and efforts to cultivate new relationships.

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The Tigers of Curzon Street

Desmond Manderson

One would be hard pressed to find a more ironic address for an Institute of Post-Colonial Studies than Curzon Street.

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The Institute of Postcolonial Studies: A Short History

Joan E Clarke OAM

This short history attempt to capture some of the struggles, hopes and realizations of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies (hereafter IPCS), Melbourne, Australia, over the twenty year period between 1996 and 2016.

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The Tyranny of the Leather Book

Joan E Clarke OAM

For people with a mental illness in Australia, an abiding fact is governments’ regulation of their personhood stretching back to colonial times. Laws were statements about their sanity.

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