| Catharine Coleborne | |
| Occupation: | academic |
| Employer: | University of Newcastle |
| Known For: | studying madness |
Catharine Coleborne is an Australian medical historian and academic administrator. She was the Head of School and Dean of Arts at the University of Newcastle (2015 to 2022) and is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Society of New South Wales.[1]
Coleborne was born in 1967. She took her first degree at the University of Melbourne before going on to study "Madness" to gain a doctorate from La Trobe University in Melbourne. She looked at gender and institutional confinement for the mentally ill during the nineteenth-century when Australia was part of the British Empire.[2]
Coleborne has continued to study madness and she has published books and papers on her research.[3]
She has published four books as sole author including Madness in the Family: Insanity and Institutions in the Australasian Colonial World, 1860–1914 in 2009 when she was an Associate Professor at Waikato University.[4]
In 2015 she became the Head of School and Dean of Arts, University of Newcastle. She was elected to be a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2021 together with 36 others including David Kalisch, Nisvan Erkal and Lyn Parker in 2021[5] In that year she was also the President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts and Social Sciences (DASSH) and she was a keynote speaker at the National Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services National Conference.[6]