Melanie Swalwell

I'm thrilled to share news about an online #mediaarts exhibition I've curated with Helen Stuckey, "Revisiting Australian CD-ROM Art of the 1990s". With the support of @aarnet.edu.au and the #EAASI platform, it is now possible to access ten key Australian interactive artworks of the 1990s, online.

Australian #highered: A NSW Parliamentary report finds six NSW universities appeared to overstate financial woes to justify job cuts. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10...

Commentary on Australian #highered wage theft woes, likened to the unpaid work by junior doctors in hospitals. www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/2026...

Here’s our story: www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

New paper just published with @cyndemoya.bsky.social "Building Better Environments: A Baker’s Dozen of Methodologies for Configuring and Selecting Emulation Environments in EAASI". Open source FTW! #AusEAASI #EAASI #digipres #archives #gamepres #borndigital www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Thanks to everyone who pledged to Region Locked today! We are doing this to have the Australian gaming community involved in the project and cannot wait to create it for you! We still have a long way to go - so please pledge, follow and share! www.kickstarter.com/projects/reg...

🚨Australia's taxpayer-funded Antisemitism Envoy Jillian Segal remains a top executive of major pro-Israel lobby group ECAJ. Her ECAJ role was exposed last year - yet she still holds the position. And refuses to answer Senate... theklaxon.com.au/q4oi

I'm excited to share my piece in Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social, which examines OpenAI's claims about ChatGPT's creative writing skills, Big Tech's weaponisation of grief and nostalgia, and the collapse of the academic humanities. lareviewofbooks.org/article/lite...

I look forward to following the defamation suits!

The campaign against Labor's tax changes has all the hallmarks of the campaign against the mining tax under Gillard. Wealth is being redistributed and those affected are doing their best to prevent it, to the detriment of everyone else. #auspol

while government/universities are getting research output for bottom-dollar, because of goodwill and sweat equity students/staff put in, it won’t change. also, isn’t it so weird the argument huge salaries are “essential to aTtrACt tOp tAlEnt” to university VC roles never applies to PhD students?! 🤔🤔

Very cool! Electric buses in Barcelona charge via an ultra-fast overhead 'pantograph'. Charge speed is up to 500kW, charging batteries to 80% in 5 to 8 minutes. www.endesa.com/en/projects/...

.@GetUp.org.au are running a campaign petitioning the Federal government to regulate the building of new data centres. Sign here: getup.org.au/campaigns/big-tech/data-centres/stop-the-data-drain

Calling artists with content on Floppies or CD-ROMs*!! The Digital Heritage Lab is sharing access to our specialist disk imaging equipment. We will show you how to preserve your obsolete disks* (CD-ROMs, Floppies, Zips). The #AusEAASI website has details: auseaasi.org/artist-outre...

Anthony has done terrific journalism that #auspol desperately needs. Please support this fundraiser if you can, now.

🚨A big shout-out: Tomorrow The Klaxon kicks off its annual fundraising campaign as part of the Local and Independent News Association (LINA). From 7am AEST (Sunday) LINA will double all donations for a short period of time. If you could support us it would be hugely appreciated!

I don't think people fully understand yet just how fragile university-hosted digital resources are after external funding ends (especially if the lead academic retires or moves or is made redundant).

The recording of my keynote from the @bodleian.ox.ac.uk Videogame Preservation symposium in March 2026 is here: youtu.be/vuSH8QYlqUs?... #vgpres26

Hooray!! We have needed an orphan works provision in Australia for a long time.

THREAD Doomscroll THIS Hey we get it. It's dark out there. But there's so much good stuff going on too. Here's a timeline cleanse courtesy of the endless determination of the world's researchers. 1/18

Melanie Swalwell, Professor of Digital Media Heritage at Swinburne University in Melbourne, opens the conference with a talk on games preservation in Australia. I feel oddly patriotic for some reason seeing 1990s Aussie games in emulation & preservation. #vgpres26

Congrats to @brewster.kahle.org for being named to the Computer History Museum 2026 Fellows! "For pioneering roles in online search engines, and in digital preservation and open access to knowledge provided by the Internet Archive" More info ➡️ computerhistory.org/2026-fellow-...

Following on from the signing of Treaty last month, the Victorian state government today offered a formal apology to First Peoples, recognising past injustices. It's well worth watching. Allan has my respect. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

Covert Action in Chile: The Significance of the Church Committee Report 50 Years Later nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-boo...

This is why I mask, because I don’t want Long Covid (or worse).

DPC Blog: Call for comments on a new guide to help you copy those floppies https://www.dpconline.org/blog/call-for-comments-on-a-new-floppy-disk-guide thanks to #FutureNostalgia led by @makethecatwise #DigiPres

We are delighted to team up with @europeana.bsky.social supporting a webinar on November 26, 2025, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. CET, on the significance of #computergames as and for #culturalheritage. The webinar is aimed at professionals in the #GLAMsector. Registration is free of charge.

The irony here is that academics don’t just write the articles for free—we also referee and edit for them for free. Something is deeply broken. “New Zealand's eight universities spent $30-million a year on journal licences and about half of that sum went to Elsevier. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

youtu.be/Jf-jHCdafZY?... www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

This is a hugely significant step.

Some good news from Australia - no text and data mining exceptions to copyright will be introduced for training AI. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

I am sensing something of a pattern here 🤔 Audited accounts show surpluses - not budget crises - at ANU and UoN. Who's next? bsky.app/profile/aust...

New Australia Institute analysis shows the University of Newcastle had net assets over $1.8 billion at the end of 2024, contrary to claims that the university is in a finanical crisis. #auspol

This is incredible news, and shows the incredible power of collective action. The fight against the neoliberal university (my own included) goes on, but its nice to hear some good news for a change.

Australian academic colleagues will want to fill this out: "The Australian University Census on Staff Wellbeing: An investigation of psychosocial safety climate in Australia's universities" doit.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...