Dr Imogen Wegman

Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania

Imogen shares her passion for supporting lifelong learning.

If you could go back and say yes or no to one thing offered to you in the past, what would it be?

I once saw a beautiful early edition of Mrs Beeton’s Cookbook in a secondhand bookshop in the UK, for a very reasonable price, but I knew it wouldn’t fit in my luggage. To this day I regret not just throwing out a pair of shoes.

What is the best advice someone has given you about your career progression?

Academia is a job, treat it like one. It is also a passion project that we get all absorbed in, but that leaves us open to exploitation. So, give your work the hours you are paid for then go home and enjoy the rest of life.

What do you love most about the work you do?

In my work, I get to meet and teach a lot of older students who never saw themselves going to university. Helping them find their feet by encouraging them in lifelong learning and engaging in a subject they love, and seeing how much their confidence grows until the day they walk across the stage at graduation is one of the most rewarding things imaginable. It is a constant reminder that knowledge is for everyone, and we have been charged with shouting it from the rooftops.

Imogen Wegman is a Lecturer in Humanities and the Coordinator of the Family History program at the University of Tasmania. She researches the everyday life of a colony, and she uses digital tools to uncover the stories of the people living on these lands. She is also a popular public speaker and is regularly invited to speak to diverse audiences. In 2016 she co-founded A Pint of History – a monthly pub-based history event in Hobart, which provided a space for academics and experts to present their historical research to a large general audience.

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