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Grace Koch
Grace is AIATSIS's Native Title Research and Access Officer. Grace has a background in musicology, education and media archiving and has lectured both nationally and internationally on topics relating to those fields.
Areas of special interest centre on how audiovisual archival material serves as evidence in Native Title claims, women's songs of Central Australia and Indigenous intellectual property issues in relation to digitisation of field recordings and documentation.
Grace Koch
Image courtesy of Kerstin Styche
As Native Title Research and Access Officer, she provides expert advice to clients and arranges for dissemination of copies of relevant material held in the AIATSIS collections. She has worked with the Central Land Council on a number of Aboriginal land claims under both the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).
Current Research Focus
Grace's research focus includes Indigenous song language, analysis of Indigenous songs from Central Australia, ethics for research, and developments in audiovisual archiving. She is on a Working Group with the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives to create a code of ethics for that organisation. In 2008, as a result of her work in audiovisual archiving, the Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, selected her to be on the inaugural Board of the National Film and Sound Archive.
As part of an ARC Research team led by Dr Luise Hercus she notated and analysed song cycles from the Simpson Desert and the Cooper. This work is continuing, although not specifically part of that grant, and two DVDs of Wangkangurru song cycles have been produced so far.
Projects include ‘The Future of Connection Material’ which aimed to establishing standards and develop skills towards proper documentation and secure storage for connection material and other original documents generated by the native title process. In connection with the findings of this report, she has produced two analyses of collection management needs for two Native Title Representative Bodies, and this work is continuing. A long-term project involves an examination of Native Title determinations in order to to analyse how songs are used as evidence.
Selected Publications
- Koch, Grace and Myfany Turpin (2008) ‘The language of Central Australian Songs’. Claire Bowern, Bethwyn Evans and Luisa Miceli (eds). 2008. Morphology and Language History. In honour of Harold Koch. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pp 167-183.
- Koch, Grace (2008) ‘Music and land rights: archival recordings as documentation for Australian Aboriginal land claims.’ Fontes Artis Musicae. January-March 2008. pp 155-164.
- Hercus, Luise, Grace Koch et al (2008) The Story of Wurru The Crane. CD-ROM.
- Koch, Grace. (2007) The Alice Moyle website: background and sound archives communications. Australasian Sound Archive no. 33, Winter 2007, pp 14-24.
- Koch, Grace (2005) ‘Negotiating the Maze:Ethical Issues for Audiovisual Archivists’. IASA Journal no. 26, December 2005. pp 10-17.
- Koch, G. (with L. Barwick, W. Arthur, and F. Morphy). (2005). (Section on music in Chapter 11) 'Performing arts, sport and games'. Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia.
- Anderson, J and G. Koch. (2004) ‘The Politics of Context: Issues for Law, Researchers and the Compilation of Databases’, In L Barwick, A Marett and J Simpson (eds), Researchers, Communities, Institutions, Sound Recordings. Sydney: University of Sydney. Available at http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?cf=2]
- McConvell, Patrick and Grace Koch (2004) Multimedia and the preservation of endangered languages- recent developments. IASA Journal no. 24, December 2004. pp 49-56.
- Koch, G. (2004) Voices of the past speaking to the future: Audiovisual documents and proof of Native Title in Australia. IASA Journal 22:20-31.
- Koch, G. (2003) Small voice in cyberspace: digitisation issues for research archives. In C. Cole and H Craig (eds), Computing Arts: Digital resources for research in the humanities. Papers from a conference held at the University of Sydney, September 2001, pp. 11-26.
- Koch, G. (2003) Peoples of the northeast and Aboriginal songs in land claims. J. Whiteoak and A. Scott-Maxwell (eds), Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia. Sydney: Currency House, pp. 25, 28-9.
- Koch, G. (2002) 'Australia's sound heritage: Sound archives in Australia and the ethical dimension'. In G. Berlin and A. Simon (eds) Music Archiving in the World. Preussischer Kulturbesitz: Verlag fuer Wissenschaft und Bildung Staatliche Museen Berlin,. pp.361-5.
- Koch, G. (2001) 'Cultural conservation: A two-way consultation'. In P. Seitel (ed.) Safeguarding Traditional Cultures: A Global Assessment. Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 159-65.
- Dixon, R.M.W. and G. Koch (1996) Dyirbal song poetyr: The Oral Literature of an Australian Rainforest People. St. Lucia, Qld.: U. Qld Press.
- Koch, G. (with Harold Koch, transl. ) (1993) Kaytetye Country. An Aboriginal history of the Barrow Creek area. Alice Springs: Institute for Aboriginal Development.
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