Ian McShane

BA Hons (Tasmania), M Ed (Canberra)

Ian is currently a research fellow with the Searchers project and the CCi Commons project. He joined ISR in 2003 to take up an Australian Postgraduate Award (APAI) to research the provision, use and management of local government facilities. The City of Moonee Valley has provided additional industry funding for the project. Ian is a historian by training and was a member of the National Museum of Australia's curatorial staff from 1990 to 2000. He has also worked in Commonwealth government portfolios of arts and immigration, and has consulted in the areas of heritage, curatorship, and tertiary education and training. Ian has research interests in public policy, the cultural sector, and Australian social history.

Thesis

Community Facilities and Public Value: Ian’s thesis, supervised by Julian Thomas and Denise Meredyth, focuses on historical, sociological and policy dimensions of community infrastructure provision and use in an inner-Melbourne municipality. Drawing on a range of archival, documentary and oral sources, the research analyses rationales and funding mechanisms that underpinned facility acquisition, contextualising recent policy discussion on cost-shifting and funding responsibility for public goods. The research draws on depth interviews with 35 residents of the municipality to obtain data on resident uses and perceptions of community facilities, the public sphere, and local governance. The study highlights gaps and conflicts between policy goals of physical asset management and community building, and develops a framework of public value to give coherence and practical direction to current and pressing questions about the renewal of Australia's ageing stock of local facilities.

Publications in the Swinburne Research Bank

Office: EW111
Telephone: +61 3 9214 4352
Email: imcshane@groupwise.swin.edu.au