Madness: Then & Now by Toby Raeburn & Claire Chang - In Conversation with Professor Catharine Coleborne

Assoc. Professor Toby R Raeburn

Toby R Raeburn is an associate professor of nursing and nurse practitioner in mental health at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney, NSW. Prior to entering academia, he spent two decades working in frontline mental health care, with a focus on assisting people to overcome homelessness and other social challenges. Toby has a growing portfolio of published works, including more than seventy journal articles and book chapters related to mental health care and history. He is particularly interested in how people’s life narratives and sense of identity relate to mental health and well-being. Living near Liverpool in south-west Sydney, Toby has spent several years contemplating the lives of people who lived in Liverpool Lunatic Asylum. He believes that increasing historical awareness has the potential to improve our ability to cope with the present and may also be used to develop a vision for the future. Picking up on such themes, Madness Then and Now is Toby’s second book.

• Assoc. Professor Toby R Raeburn's website

Claire R Chang

Claire R Chang is a contemplative psychotherapist, yoga teacher, educator and independent scholar with over twenty years of experience in the mental health field in Australia and the United States. She specialises in working with individuals navigating complex, chronic and extreme mental health challenges. A lived experience advocate, Claire’s own journey with severe mental health difficulties has profoundly shaped her work. Having encountered some of the best and worst of modern mental health care, she is committed to critically unpacking conventional understandings of mental illness and treatment while championing holistic and human rights–based perspectives and approaches to care. Born and raised in south-west Sydney, not far from the grounds where Liverpool Lunatic Asylum once stood, Claire is currently based in Melbourne. Madness Then and Now is Claire’s first book.

• Claire R Chang's website

Professor Catharine Coleborne

For more than 25 years, Professor Catharine Coleborne has been exploring the social and cultural histories of mental illness and the institutions created to confine, treat and assist the mentally ill. Through her research Cathy has sought to break down the way we understand and talk about what she calls “mad history”. Her research argues for the relevance of historical perspectives on mental health, seeking to understand how these histories can—and should—inform debates about mental health services today. She is currently based at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales where she is a Professor in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences. Her most recent book is Vagrant Lives in Colonial Australasia: Regulating Mobility, 1840-1910 (Bloomsbury, 2024).