Julie Collins

Dr Julie Collins is an architectural historian, curator and active researcher. Her interests range from the architectural history of therapeutic places to the study of architectural drawing collections and heritage.

At the Architecture Museum she is responsible for an invaluable research collection of 400,000 items of architectural design documentation, drawings, photographs, artefacts and ephemera. As well as managing this physical collection, Dr Collins researches and writes biographies, catalogues, guides to sources and website content, while curating exhibitions and presenting public lectures and outreach events. Dr Collins was named '2024 South Australian Historian of the Year' by the History Council of South Australia .

Dr Collins has written or co-written several books including "The Architecture and Landscape of Health: A Historical Perspective on Therapeutic Places 1790-1940" published in 2020 by Routledge, "Not for ourselves alone: The South Australian Home Builders’ Club, 1945- 1965" (2013), and "The Architects Board of South Australia: A History 1939-2009" (2010). She has contributed many book chapters to edited volumes including 'A powerful, creative history: the reticence of women architects to donate professional records to archival repositories' in the international compendium "Women in Architecture" (Routledge 2018), 'An Architectural Ornament', in "Adelaide’s Jubilee International Exhibition 1887-1888" (2016), and 'South Australian Architecture' in "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture" (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Her research projects have included those on the history of Department Stores in South Australia, the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition building of 1887, work on the influence of climate on the colonial architecture of Adelaide, the history of psychiatric asylum landscapes, and early tuberculosis sanatoria in Australia. She has also researched the South Australian Home Builders' Club 1945-1965, the Small Homes Service of South Australia and the modern postwar house, the emergence of tall buildings in Adelaide 1912-1939, and women in the architectural profession 1910-1960. Dr Collins' PhD thesis was titled ‘Ways of Living: The expression of the home/work relationship in Australian architectural design of the late twentieth century’ (2003).